HISD

Mike Miles wasted little time Thursday before imposing major changes to the Houston Independent School District he now oversees, launching a plan to reconstitute 29 struggling campuses that forces employees to reapply for their jobs but promises higher pay to some.

“It is my great privilege to lead HISD in this work and make it one of the best school districts in the country,” Miles said in a tweeted statement. “For the families of students who are not getting what they need from their schools, improving your child’s education experience is job one.”

The Texas Education Agency selected Miles, a former Dallas ISD superintendent, and nine new board members to run HISD. The state-led ousting of the former superintendent and board capped years of legal feuding over a state takeover that critics decry as an anti-democratic power grab.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, who served with Miles a decade ago in Dallas ISD, announced his pick on the first day of summer for Houston public school students.

The nine board of managers named are: Audrey Momanaee, Ric Campo, Angela Lemond Flowers, Michelle Cruz Arnold, Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Janette Garza Lindner, Rolando Martinez, Paula Mendoza and Adam P. Rivon. The group includes HISD parents, a small business owner and a trial attorney. One newly appointed member, Garza Lindner, narrowly lost a bid for the board in 2021.

While the group will have its first meeting on June 8, Miles confirmed Thursday that 29 schools in the Wheatley, Kashmere and North Forest high school feeder patterns will be reconstituted as part of his efforts to establish “wholesale systemic reform” in struggling schools.

Staff from top to bottom, including principals, teachers and maintenance staff, will have to reapply for their jobs, which will be open to any qualified applicant. Those hired will earn an average of $85,000 per year and be supported by teacher apprentices and learning coaches, Miles said, in what he’s dubbing the “New Education System.”

He compared the system to a “hospital model,” in which the apprentices and coaches do much of the prep work and teachers, the “surgeons” in this scenario, execute the most critical tasks and get paid the most money. Lesson plans and instructional materials will be developed by central administration and distributed to teachers — though they will not be required to use them.

Teachers who are not rehired at their school, or who are not interested in reapplying there, will be placed at a different campus in the district, Miles said. Librarians will likely not be brought back to those campuses, Miles said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle editorial board.

See here for some background, and go read the rest. I don’t want to get into the specifics at this time, because we’re still dealing with the process that got us here and its many problems. By all means, give your feedback to Miles and the Board, it’s the only input we’re going to get. In the end, all this either works towards his stated goals or it doesn’t. I don’t have to like or agree with any of it, but I do have to hope it does work, because failure and the waste of however many years is a catastrophe.

Mike Miles and the Board of Managers

Jun 2nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s official.

Former Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles − described as a military-minded leader who pushes reform − is the state’s choice for the new Houston ISD superintendent.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced his long-rumored decision Thursday morning, the day after school ended for the 2022-23 year. Morath served on the elected Dallas ISD school board that hired Miles as superintendent there in 2012.

Miles inherits a district in Houston beset by declining enrollment and a subsequent budget crisis, along with a sizable segment of families, teachers and local leaders who condemn this takeover as a politically motivated attempt to weaken urban public schools. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, Miles said he plans to spend his first year focusing on 30 of the highest need schools, introducing a “fundamentally different staffing model” that sees average teacher salaries rise to $85,000, but positions like librarians being cut.

He also pledged not to close any schools in his first year, but said there will “most likely” be closures down the line. He predicted his vision of a transformed HISD would take about five or six years to execute.

“We have to make progress this very first year, we have to get rid of this myth that it takes five or six (years) for one school to turn around. We’ve been able to do it in one year,” Miles said. “We can’t do 273 schools at one time, but we can make good progress on the 30 schools and grow that.”

It remains to be seen how much Miles, who most recently served as a charter school network CEO, will prioritize public engagement as he attempts to improve educational outcomes at struggling Houston schools. He leaves behind a reputation in Dallas as an innovative, but combative leader who sometimes derailed his own reform attempts by making enemies of district stakeholders, once going so far as to have a trustee physically removed by armed officers from a school that she represented.

“The challenge with Mike Miles wasn’t his ideas of turning around schools or trying to reform education, the challenge with Mike Miles was his approach with people. He’s a military-minded person, he came in saying ‘It’s my way or the highway,’ and he didn’t do well with Dallas politics,” said Edward Turner, a longtime Dallas education advocate.

While in Dallas, Miles was accountable to an elected board of trustees, at HISD he will be accountable only to a board of managers appointed by the same person who first brought him to Texas over a decade ago.

“I really think if your ideal person is somebody who doesn’t care about politics, will run a tight ship and turn something around, then Mike Miles is the ideal candidate for that,” Turner said.

We first heard Miles’ name as a possible appointed Superintendent two weeks ago. The Houston Landing did a long profile on him at the time, and they’re back with an in-depth interview and a companion piece with more details. I strongly urge you to read them, and to read the Chron editorial based on the ed board’s interview with him; there’s video of it (about 34 minutes) at the link.

Here also are your Board of Managers.

• Audrey Momanaee (recommended to serve as Board President): Ms. Momanaee is a Houston ISD parent and native Houstonian who grew up in a family of public school teachers and developed a strong sense of public service. Ms. Momanaee is an experienced litigation attorney and advocate for pro bono legal work, handling numerous cases to help families across Houston.

• Ric Campo (recommended to serve as Board Vice President): For more than 40 years, Mr. Campo has leveraged his energy, experience, and advocacy to build a better Houston. He has served on numerous public and private boards, in service to families, children, reducing homelessness, and promoting the city of Houston. Mr. Campo is the grandson of immigrant farmworkers and was the first in his family to graduate from college before successfully building his own company in Houston.

• Angela Lemond Flowers (recommended to serve as Board Secretary): An experienced educator, Ms. Lemond Flowers began her teaching career at Jesse H. Jones High School in Houston ISD, where her mother also taught. Ms. Lemond Flowers has devoted her career to the advancement of children’s education. She has served as a high school English teacher and in administrative leadership for over twenty years in Houston-area schools. She is the proud mother of four, including two Houston ISD graduates.

• Michelle Cruz Arnold, Ph.D.: The mother of a Houston ISD student, Dr. Cruz Arnold earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Planning and has spent more than twenty years as an education policy advocate working to create college and career opportunities for students. Dr. Cruz Arnold is a proud Houstonian who currently leads government relations and advocacy work for a national non-profit college access organization.

• Cassandra Auzenne Bandy: Ms. Bandy is a proud Houstonian, Houston ISD graduate, and parent of fourth-generation Houston ISD students. She is an active PTO volunteer at her children’s school. She is a chemical engineer by training and currently works as a business strategy manager at a global consulting firm.

• Janette Garza Lindner: Ms. Garza Lindner is a devoted wife and working mom of two children who attend Houston ISD schools. She is a management consultant within the energy industry, and her civic advocacy spans education, the arts, and making our neighborhoods safer and healthier. A life-long Texan, Ms. Garza Lindner was born and raised in Brownsville and has lived in Houston for more than 20 years.

• Rolando Martinez: Mr. Martinez is a native Houstonian, a Houston ISD graduate, and a parent of three children who all attend Houston ISD schools. He currently serves on the Houston ISD District Advisory Committee, and he works as a human resources manager at a large healthcare system in the Texas Medical Center.

• Paula Mendoza: Ms. Mendoza is a longtime Houston resident, the mother of a Houston ISD graduate, and a committed community leader and entrepreneur. She is a small business owner and has demonstrated her commitment to the Houston community through service on numerous non-profit and governmental boards, including the University of Houston Board of Regents, Texas Ethics Commission, and Texas State Board of Public Accountancy.

• Adam P. Rivon: Mr. Rivon is the parent of a Houston ISD student and is the founder and owner of a small business in the real estate industry. Mr. Rivon proudly served his country in the United States Army, earning a Bronze Star for leadership as an Army Artillery Officer during combat operations in Iraq.

Houston Landing and the Chron have additional info about these nine folks; the press release link I got from Campos. I have heard of Ric Campo and know/am friends with Janette Garza Lindner, who lives in my neighborhood; she was a candidate for HISD Trustee in District I, my district, in 2021. I don’t know anything more than what I read yesterday about the others, but offhand they look fine. I’ve said that we’d learn something about the TEA’s intentions from the Board they picked, so this is a good start. Given the unrepresentative demography of the applicant pool, they did a good job with that, too. Kudos to them.

I’m still mad that we’re in this position. I’m mad that the community has lost its voice, I’m mad at the state’s increasingly large appetite for bulldozing local control, and I’m deeply skeptical of the process and the belief that an administrative office that has no experience at managing schools or school districts has some special insight in running schools and school districts. I’m wary of Mike Miles, and even with my initial approval, this Board of Managers needs to prove itself. I see a lot more ways the next five to six years, as now-Superintendent Miles believes this will take, end in disappointment if not failure rather than anything that could be labeled a success.

But we need this to succeed, and I want it to succeed, because the children and families of HISD need and deserve it to succeed. We need to do better by our kids, and every year we don’t is a year they don’t get back. It’s a year that makes it that much harder for them to get educated and get on the path to a better life. I’m a political person and I can’t help but view this all through a political lens, but that’s not what really matters here. What matters is the kids. If Mike Miles and this Board can deliver on that, I’m still going to be mad about how we got here, but I can live with it. I wish them all well. Let’s stay focused on what matters and hold them to it. The Press, the Trib, and the TSTA have more.

Superintendent House’s last day

May 28th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

He’s out of there.

Houston ISD Superintendent Millard House II is marking his last day in the office as the head of Texas’ largest school system on Friday, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner, nearly a week before the Texas Education Agency is set to take over the public school district.

“This will be (HISD Superintendent) Millard House last day. In 20 months as superintendent he has improved the academic performance of the schools that needed attention,” Turner tweeted Friday morning.

“He shepherded the district in difficult times. I want to thank him and apologize to him for how the State treated him,” Turner said.

Reached by phone on Friday, House clarified that he will be using vacation time in the days leading up to the takeover, and that Friday is his last physical day in office. He is set to give his last public remarks as superintendent on Tuesday night when he delivers the keynote address at Carnegie Vanguard High School’s graduation.

House said he plans to use the vacation time for doctor’s appointments and other personal matters.

“I will still be connected to the district until May 31st,” House said.

[…]

House took over HISD in July 2021 after spending four years as superintendent of Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System. In his roughly two years leading Texas’s largest school district, House guided the district out of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and lifted 40 of 50 schools off the D and F list.

In announcing the state takeover of HISD in March, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath applauded House’s performance as superintendent but said he was obligated to appoint a new leader alongside a new board of managers.

“Ultimately, a board of managers allows Houston to completely reframe the governing team to focus on servant leadership to truly believe that the board exists to serve the staff and students, not the other way around,” Morath said in March. “So it’s important that we set the district leadership team up with a fresh start.”

That “fresh start” is slated for June 1, when the TEA is expected to announce a new superintendent and an appointed board of managers to replace the democratically elected board that currently oversees the district. With less than a week until the takeover, the TEA has refused to publicly narrow down the list of board candidates beyond the 227 people who completed a two-day training session last month.

Many of the superintendent’s senior cabinet members and other high-ranking staff in the district are departing the district as the school year ends.

The main impression I have of Superintendent House at this point is that I still feel like I don’t know a lot about him or his vision for HISD. He was not nearly as communicative as some other Superintendents, like Terry Grier. I can’t recall him sitting down for a comprehensive interview of his plans and strategies and whatever else. He gets credit for the progress HISD has made during his tenure, but the main piece of his agenda was not implemented after public pushback, which again suggests a gap in his communications. We’ll never know what he might have done if he’d had more time. I wish him well with his next gig.

The final 227

May 25th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

No comments yet

Somewhere in here are your Board of Managers.

With about a week until the Texas Education Agency plans to appoint a new Houston ISD superintendent and board of managers, the state agency says it is still considering more than 200 applicants for the nine-member board.

The Chronicle obtained through a public information request the names of the 227 people — educators, business professionals, parents and others — who completed a two-day Lone Star Governance training during one of two weekends last month. All of those people remained under active consideration for placement on the board as of Tuesday, said Jake Kobersky, the state agency’s media relations director.

“We’ll be whittling down from that list,” he said, confirming that no one from outside that group of 227 will be chosen for the board.

[…]

Niti Patel, an HISD parent who completed the training, said she was not invited to conduct a virtual interview or participate in the follow-up weekend session.

Instead, she and other participants said they received an email from Lecholop on April 28 thanking them for engaging in the application and selection process.

“TEA is in the process of vetting all applicants who attended LSG training and will continue to conduct candidate evaluations between now and the placement of the board in June. All applicants who attended LSG training remain in contention for potential appointment to the Board of Managers,” Lecholop wrote in the email. “Your genuine participation and belief that all students in Houston ISD can and will be successful are emblematic of why this intervention will be successful.”

Patel said she believes she has been eliminated from the process.

“I think if I was in the process of being narrowed, they would have talked to me by now,” she said.

The weekend training was educational, she said, and included activities like role playing a scenario in which an angry parent shows up at a board meeting. Patel said she was impressed by the other participants but felt that there was a lack of clarity surrounding the criteria and qualifications needed to serve on the board. She now believes the process may be a “sham.”

“There was a lot of talk about how student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change,” she said. “It wasn’t clear to me that this was anything more than an actual training…Later on, I found out it was kind of an audition for going to the next step.”

Pamela Boveland, a community advocate and adjunct professor at the University of Houston, said Lecholop and another TEA representative were “circling like sharks” during the training sessions. She did not get a follow-up interview and also believes she has been cut from consideration, although she has not received any communication explicitly telling her so.

“I don’t think they wanted to be caught with the 30 (names),” Boveland said. “We’re not still in the process…That’s as far away from the truth as it can get.”

Daniel Gorelick, an associate professor of biology at Baylor College of Medicine and an HISD parent, said he completed the two-day training session and a Zoom interview but did not progress to the next step. He said he learned a lot about how HISD and the school board work.

“I left that two-day session thinking that if they picked all nine people from that group we’d be in good hands,” he said. “There were really a lot of good, smart, dedicated, talented folks. I was actually very impressed.”

See here and here for some background, and click over to see both the original list of 450 applicants and the 227 who made the cut by attending the sessions. One of the latter is the parent of one of my daughter’s classmates; I texted them about this and was told they did not get any further interview from the TEA but was impressed by the people in their session and felt a lot better about the whole process afterwards. I remain skeptical of the TEA and how they have handled this, but as I have said before if they pick a good Board it will help. We’ll see.

Meet Mike Miles

May 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Houston Landing profiles the man who seems poised to be the imposed Superintendent of the taken-over HISD.

A hard-charging education leader devoted to shaking up the status quo in struggling school districts appears poised to become the superintendent of Houston ISD.

Mike Miles, the former superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District and current CEO of a charter school network, has emerged in recent days as the likely incoming leader of HISD following comments by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner; U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston; and the president of HISD’s largest teachers union.

The decision ultimately will be made in the coming weeks by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who is installing a new board and superintendent in HISD. The state intervention largely stems from chronically low performance at one HISD campus, Wheatley High School, which triggered a Texas law requiring action by Morath.

State education officials say no decision has been made about HISD’s superintendent, and no appointments will be announced before June 1. Texas Education Agency officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on speculation about Miles. Efforts to reach Miles were unsuccessful.

The potential appointment of Miles, however, makes too much sense to ignore: Morath served as a Dallas board member during Miles’ tenure; the two share a strikingly similar outlook on education policy; and Miles has spoken at length about the need for significant reforms in large, urban school district operations.

If Miles is Morath’s choice, the selection portends dramatic, swift changes in HISD.

The former Army Ranger, State Department diplomat and school district leader is known for aggressively upending bureaucracies and reshaping classrooms. His no-excuses approach to management and preferred policies — sidelining low-performing administrators, instituting accountability-related measures and reorienting teachers’ responsibilities, among others — have endeared him to those frustrated with underwhelming student achievement in urban school districts.

“Unfortunately, most district leaders are way too worried about their careers and future job prospects to really break the status quo; board members are way too worried about any noise from their constituents,” Miles wrote in a blog last month for Third Future Schools, a Colorado-based charter school operator where he serves as CEO.

“There is little vision and little appetite for true systemic reform, the effects of which might not be noticed for a couple of years.”

Yet Miles has left behind a trail of disgruntled community leaders, former employees and union champions at previous stops in Dallas and Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he served as superintendent for six years. Miles’ opponents often bristle at his top-down leadership tactics, along with his distaste for more union-aligned approaches to education.

“The attitude, the atmosphere, in most of the worksites and campuses was one of fear and intimidation,” said Rena Honea, the longtime president of the Alliance-AFT teachers association in Dallas. “That’s how his rule was. Not a lot of collaborative input, which is what education should be: people working together.”

Miles undoubtedly would encounter similar resistance in Houston, where voters and political leaders have generally opposed Morath’s move to replace HISD’s school board and superintendent.

The potential selection of Miles also would stand in sharp contrast to the elected board’s preference in recent years for superintendents who aimed to build consensus and moved slower on major overhauls to the district. Miles’ appointment would harken back to the era of former HISD superintendent Terry Grier, whose management style and education policy outlook mirror Miles’ approach. Grier resigned from HISD in 2015 after 6 ½ years at the helm.

Miles, however, ultimately would answer to a board handpicked by Morath — who can remove any appointed member for any reason.

“He’ll have everything he needs to do what he wants to get done,” said former Dallas trustee Lew Blackburn, whose 18-year tenure on the board overlapped with Miles’ reign. “The board members here, we asked a lot of questions, pushed back on a few things. In Houston, there might not be as much pushback from the board of managers.”

See here for the background. There’s a lot more, so read the rest. The story notes that Miles succeeded in raising standardized test score while at DISD, and that is what we want and need here. How painful it will be to get there remains to be seen. Miles may not be the guy, of course – the TEA typically hasn’t said a word and presumably won’t until after June 1 – but it’s highly probable that the selection has been made, and I’m sure that Mayor Turner and Rep. Jackson Lee have good sources. We’ll find out soon enough.

The last HISD Board of Trustees meeting

May 20th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Next up is takeover time.

The Texas Education Agency is still aiming to appoint a new Houston ISD superintendent and a board of managers as planned on or around June 1, according to an agency representative.

The new leaders will assume their roles immediately and will likely meet for the first time on June 8, said Steve Lecholop, the agency’s deputy commissioner of governance, during a presentation at the last meeting of the HISD elected trustees.

“We’re still on track to name the new members of the board of managers on or around June 1 — it’s our great hope that June 1 is the day,” he said. “In addition to the board announcement that day, the commissioner will also announce the name of the new superintendent.”

The board of managers will be sworn in the same day as the announcement, Lecholop said. Meanwhile, the superintendent will begin working under a 21-day interim contract until he or she gets formal approval by the board of managers.

The state-appointed superintendent and board of managers will begin by launching a 90-day community engagement strategy with assistance from elected board members, Lecholop said.

The TEA representative said he expects and encourages the elected trustees, after they are stripped of their voting power, to engage with the new district leaders by serving as a liaison to the community, providing institutional knowledge and helping the board of managers develop its goals, vision and values.

“You guys know your communities,” he said. “And that is incredibly valuable.”

Continued engagement, involvement and training, Lecholop said, is important to ensure a smooth transition back to elected control, which will happen over a three-year period after the district meets the TEA exit criteria.

Nice to know that the TEA considers the existing Board members to have some value. I’ve been mulling this over, because the outgoing Trustees are basically in the position of being asked by the management that just laid them off to train their replacements. (Like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve been in a similar position before.) The case for doing so if that you’re a professional, you care about the mission and the people you’re leaving behind, and you have pride in what you’ve done. The argument against is basically “Fuck you, I want nothing to do with this bullshit, this mess is all on you”. Not exactly dignified, and your reputation will take a hit, but for pure selfish emotional satisfaction it’s hard to beat.

I do think the outgoing (in power and responsibility, if not in position) Trustees should work with the incoming Board of Managers, because they are still elected officials and made a promise to serve the district and its stakeholders, but if they want to do so on something resembling their own terms, I will understand. I think it’s okay to approach this with the mindset that the appointees have something to prove before they can be trusted. I think it’s okay to make it clear to your constituents that what happens next is entirely the responsibility of the state of Texas, that if things go well it’s because they built on the solid foundation that you and your colleagues left for them and if things go badly it’s because they came in and wrecked it all. I think it’s not only okay but a requirement to talk to the press and anyone who will listen if the new guys are about to do something you don’t like and don’t think the public will like. You still have your voice, go ahead and keep using it. And hope for the best, because the sooner these guys are out of here, the better. Campos and the Press have more.

A look at how the TEA trains Board of Managers wannabes

May 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

From the Observer:

Since mid-March this year, when the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it would be taking over the Houston Independent School District, the state agency has demurred when asked about the district’s future, saying decisions will be made by a 9-member board of managers to be selected from the local community by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

But interviews with and contemporaneous notes from participants in TEA’s April 22-23 board of managers applicants training, as well as an audio recording of the sessions obtained by the Texas Observer, reveal the state plans to limit the board’s role to enforcing high-stakes testing in schools and rubber-stamping financial and operational decisions made by the new superintendent, also to be selected by Morath.

In what seemed like a 16-hour indoctrination session, TEA’s “Lone Star Governance” program trainers had the 230 applicants who attended repeat self-flagellating mantras about their lack of integrity and lack of concern for student success to get them ready for what they called the “Lone Star Governance mindset.”

Lindsey Pollock, a former Houston ISD elementary school principal of 13 years and a current professor teaching in Sarasota University’s educational leadership graduate program, who participated in the training sessions, told the Observer: “I spent two days being demeaned by a presenter who had purposeful intentions to mislead and misrepresent the reasons we were all there. … They were only looking for people who were going to be agreeable.”

[…]

During the sessions, TEA trainers also told applicants that the board’s sole focus was to set the “student outcome” goals and the “goals and values of the community.” But when Pollock, the ex-principal, said community members value other measures of learning apart from the state’s standardized test, called STAAR, TEA’s training facilitator Ashley Paz backtracked and said student outcome goals have to start with standardized test scores.

Another participant raised concerns that other subjects would be overlooked with the state’s emphasis on standardized testing, to which Paz replied, “You don’t think reading and math are important?”

When participant Pamela Boveland, a retired director of research and technology at the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, asked Crabill, one of the trainers, if students in vulnerable communities would be provided with more resources to succeed, [A.J.] Crabill seemed to dismiss her question by citing his own upbringing: “As a child who … was in foster care and aged out, I have absolutely no sympathy for the idea that I could not be taught.”

Crabill also suggested that teachers are only as good as their students’ standardized test scores: “We might choose to increase teacher retention if we feel like that’s going to help us improve student outcomes. But if we do that and those outcomes don’t improve, we need to figure something else out. The only reason the whole system exists is to improve student outcomes.”

As a parent with a child in the school district, [Anne] Sung, the ex-board member, expressed concern that if the new board’s primary focus is standardized test scores, it would disempower the board to address the community’s diverse concerns.

“If they’re being told that the only thing that matters is STAAR scores, then you can’t weigh in when the community is concerned about other matters. I want my child to learn. But I also want my child to be happy at school,” Sung said. “It seems like we’ll be too busy staring at student outcomes or test scores to wonder why can’t we teach our kids about the real history of America, or why we are not allowed to vote for our own leaders here, or run our own elections? All of those things are connected.”

Hold that thought for a minute while we read this from Campos:

Brad Wray is a teacher and a District Advisory Committee Member with HISD. I have known Brad for years now. He sent this out this morning:

Yesterday, DAC representatives were invited to a Q&A with TEA Commissioner Mike Morath regarding the takeover of HISD. Below are answers to some of the questions that were asked. These are not direct quotes from Commissioner Morath, but I tried to capture the main point of what he was saying.

If the District has brought our district grade up to a B+ (Wheatley HS is up to a C), then why are you all here?

Answer: The law (HB 1842) says Morath shall either close a school or appoint a board of managers. Improved scores are irrelevant.

What is the process for choosing a superintendent?

Answer: Morath makes the decision. He can’t confirm or deny that it will be Mike Miles. (Houston Chronicle: Who is Mike Miles?)

Any planned changes to pay scale? Will teachers get a pay increase due to inflation?

Answer: Doesn’t expect any this coming year. Believes that teachers should make six figures. How resources are used is up to the Board of Managers.

Will anyone who has been in the district be consulted with decisions you all are going to make? (You all are not from this area, so how will you be able to make the right decisions for a district of children and staff you know nothing about.)

Answer: The Board will be made up of people who live in the district. Morath will strive to have a geographically representative Board of Managers. Existing “gerrymandered” district boundaries will not necessarily be adhered to.

Do you plan to close schools?

Answer: I have not closed any schools. It’s up to the Board.

How will you address inequities?

Answer: This is up to the Board.

How will you alleviate uneasiness that we have about the takeover?

Answer: Communicating what is happening. This won’t be any more extreme than what happens when a superintendent change happens.

Will retention stipends be affected?

Answer: I don’t foresee this changing, but this is up to the Board.

Can you assure us that our schools will not be turned into charter schools?

Answer: I could have chartered schools after year 5 but I have not. It’s up to the Board how schools are managed.

How do you plan to manage the budget deficit?

Answer: How resources are used is up to the Board.

“It’s not the people in this room that are the problems, it’s the district leadership.”

-Mike Morath

Thanks for the info, Brad.

Yeah, none of this is alleviating my concern that the TEA will be completely unaccountable and the Board won’t be in much of a position to fight back, if they were so inclined. It’s going to be a long two-to-however-many years.

Does the TEA already have a new Superintendent in mind?

May 17th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Mayor Turner thinks so, and wants the TEA to be more up front about its intentions.

Pressure is mounting on the Texas Education Agency to name the superintendent who will soon oversee the Houston Independent School District as the nearing takeover prompts growing speculation and calls for transparency.

Mayor Sylvester Turner took to social media over the weekend to call on the TEA to confirm or deny a widespread rumor circulating since March that the agency plans to appoint former Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles to replace Millard House II at the helm of HISD.

“I am hearing from people in Houston and Dallas that Mike Miles is the person,” he said in a statement. “The TEA Commissioner should confirm or deny. People within the district are making decisions based on what they are hearing. This process has been plagued by rumors from the beginning.”

A TEA spokesperson reiterated that the agency has made no decisions and plans to appoint a superintendent and board of managers no earlier than June 1.

Miles, who served as superintendent in Dallas from 2012 to 2015, is now the founder and CEO of Third Future Schools, a network of public charter schools serving 4,500 students in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana. He previously worked as superintendent at Harrison School District in Colorado Springs.

In recent blog posts and media appearances, Miles has spoken about the need for systemic change to the education system and a desire to prepare kids for the future workforce. His company believes in high expectations for children and educators, according to the website, along with accountability.

During his tenure in Dallas, Miles introduced several reform measures, including a new performance-based payment system for teachers and principals, and stirred some disruption and controversy due in part to his management style, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Miles did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment on Monday.

Meanwhile, Turner said he has had no conversations with the TEA since March when it first announced state intervention in the district, a move that followed years of litigation and came in response to schools beset by chronic low academic achievement.

The mayor said the process has been “flawed and anti-democratic,” criticizing the state for providing little transparency to parents, school personnel and the press.

“The sole decision-making is in Austin and the stakeholders in HISD are being disregarded,” he said. “The state’s move to take over the largest school district in Texas comes with very little local input, no additional resources and no benchmarks by which it, the state, can be assessed and held accountable.”

If the TEA really does intend to name a new Superintendent on or just after June 1, then of course they’ve been talking to people and almost certainly have a final candidate in mind. HISD is a big district, this is a massive job that will come with a lot of scrutiny and even more skepticism (at best) from the community, and whoever it is will have to make arrangements in their lives to take the job. You know, like leave their current job and relocate to Houston. If they don’t have a finalist, then it’s understandable that they’d keep quiet about their search – it’s what HISD itself would do if they were the ones searching for a new Super – but once there is a single name, there’s no reason not to make it public. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the choice of Mike Miles, if that’s who it is, given how tumultuous his tenure was at DISD, but the process and the lack of transparency is at least as big a concern.

It’s important to remember here that none of the original conditions for the takeover still exist now, with the possible exception of the state of special education at HISD, which is something that the state doesn’t exactly shine at either. As such, any argument that what HISD needs is a clear-the-decks, change-everything visionary is at best debatable. One could say that this was Millard House’s remit when he was hired, but he won’t be allowed to follow through on it. Miles may have been the right person for DISD. I’m not really in a position to know. At least he was hired by the duly elected DISD trustees, who had to face the voters after they made that choice. There are some yellow flags here even without his current gig as a charter school guy, and we the stakeholders of HISD have no control over it. That’s a scary situation. And the TEA won’t even bother to tell us whether this is what we should be worrying about.

Meanwhile, another senior leader departs HISD ahead of the takeover.

Deputy Superintendent Rick Cruz will be leaving Houston ISD this summer for a new role in North Carolina, marking the latest departure among district Cabinet members as the state takeover nears.

Asheville City Schools has named Cruz as its new superintendent to oversee the 4,300-student school district, according to the district.

In his 15-year career at HISD, Cruz said he has been through many changes and worked under different leaders while climbing his way up from a teacher to a senior administrator. His departure is “not about the takeover,” he said. Rather, he decided earlier this year to pursue a superintendent role and was selected in January for a leadership program called Chiefs for Change that works to develop superintendents and state education leaders.

“My decision to start down that path started before the takeover announcement,” Cruz said. “It’s bittersweet because I love Houston, I love the Houston community… I’m proud of the progress that has been made. I will always have a very special place in my heart for Houston, but it is time for me to grow as a leader.”

Congrats to Rick Cruz on the promotion, which sounds like a great opportunity. I take him at his word when he says that decision wasn’t about the takeover, but I’m sure it was there in the background – how could it not be? However you look at it, even if we get the most status quo-focused appointed Superintendent and the most community-focused appointed Board, we’re still going to come back to a very different HISD than the one we started with. There’s no getting around that.

We ask again if the HISD Board should bother doing anything right now

May 9th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I think the answer is still mostly No, but there’s some nuance to that.

The Houston Independent School District board met Thursday to discuss potential cuts to the district’s $2.2 billion budget as it faces a growing a growing deficit and a looming takeover by the Texas Education Agency.

Superintendent Millard House II has already walked back plans to slash school budgets by roughly $40 million after an outcry from the Board of Trustees, which insisted against campus-level cuts. That leaves cuts of just $15.3 million to the HISD central office with the district facing a projected $118 million deficit that could rise to $258 million by the 2024-2025 school year, as enrollment drops and pandemic-related funds dry up.

Most of those $15.3 million in savings would come from closing unfilled positions. The district had previously proposed reducing small school subsidies and high school allotments, along with returning to an attendance-based school funding policy that was suspended due to COVID-19, before those suggestions were nixed by the board.

HISD expects enrollment to continue to decline by nearly 3 percent between this school year and the next, from roughly 189,000 students to 184,000. The district’s enrollment has already fallen by about 31,000 students since the 2016-2017 school year, according to HISD data.

“As enrollment declines, that’s an impact to our revenues. That’s less money coming in than we have to be able to spend,” said Jim Grady, a consultant who presented the proposed budget to the board.

[…]

It’s not clear how the impending state takeover will affect the budgeting process, but the local board is moving forward with their plan to lay out a financial plan as normal. Another, final budget workshop is scheduled for May 18.

See here for some background. I’ve spoken in favor of the Board doing as little as possible in the time it has left, so as to leave the difficult and surely unpopular decisions that will need to be made about the looming deficit and the likely need to close some schools (seriously, what are we doing about that enrollment drop?) to the unelected overlords who will soon have to run the place. But maybe that’s too simple. Maybe it’s better to do at least some of the easier and more straightforward things on their own, in part because they will be done anyway and in part to perhaps head off some weird directions that the Board of Managers could take if given full discretion over these initial conditions. Give them slightly less room to do things we wouldn’t have considered, as well as less room to build up political capital for making the “hard” choices that really aren’t that hard. The Board of Trustees exists as a decision-making entity until June 1, and the district needs to pass a budget by June 30. My position is maybe more in flux now than it was before, but I’m still comfortable saying to the Board to not overthink this. Do the easy things, and pass on the rest.

More HISD departures

May 6th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Gonna be a very different district when we get it back.

Three more senior staff members at Houston ISD are departing their high-ranking posts at the district as the Texas Education Agency prepares to appoint new leaders to govern the largest school district in Texas.

Police chief Pedro Lopez Jr., chief of schools Denise Watts and chief talent officer Jeremy Grant-Skinner will leave the district this month or next, according to public records. Watts’ last working day is June 14 and Grant-Skinner’s is May 31, according to resignation forms obtained through a public records request, which show that both submitted their resignation in April.

Lopez, meanwhile, has been selected to serve as top cop in Killeen, a city roughly 75 miles north of Austin.

Killeen city manager Kent Cagle last week selected Lopez to lead the Killeen Police Department following a nationwide search that netted 20 applicants, according to a press release from the city.

[…]

The departure of three chiefs from HISD comes as the takeover of the 186,000-student district has stirred confusion and concerns among parents, teachers and other community members.

The state agency plans to suspend the powers of Superintendent Millard House II and HISD elected trustees on or after June 1, replacing them with appointed managers to govern the district for at least two years.

One other member of the superintendent’s cabinet has already departed the district ahead of the takeover.

Max Moll, former chief engagement officer, left his position at HISD in April, noting in a Twitter thread that he was grateful for House’s steadfast leadership in challenging circumstances.

“His leadership is inspiring, focused, and selfless, and Houston will be worse-off because of his potential departure,” Moll wrote on social media. “I still believe in the power of public education and its ability to transform lives. (Houston ISD) will continue to shape the future of our city and, for that reason alone, we all must ensure its next chapter is successful. Our city, students, and families deserve nothing less.”

While all three of these people were in senior leadership positions, none of them were longtime HISD employees, all being hired between 2020 and 2022. We were between Superintendents for much of that, and some level of turnover is always going to happen. It’s still the case that their replacements will be hired by a Superintendent that will not be picked by the elected Board. The effects of this takeover will be longer-lasting and more far-reaching than just in the classroom.

First round of cuts for Board of Managers wannabes

May 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

And then there were two hundred and twenty-five.

Fewer than half of the people who applied for the Houston ISD board of managers completed a weekend governance training required to move forward in the application process, according to the Texas Education Agency.

The agency said 225 people completed a mandatory two-day Lone Star Governance training that took place over the past two weekends. Those applicants are eligible to advance to the next phase of interviews, while those who did not attend the training, left early or skipped the second day have been eliminated from the process.

With a little more than a month until the agency plans to appoint the board of managers, the TEA is now moving forward with the interview phase of the selection process, which includes virtual and observational interviews, according to the agency.

[…]

Applicants included 199 men and 260 women, according to the TEA. The applicant pool was roughly 39 percent Black, 33 percent white, 11 percent Hispanic, 7.5 percent two or more races, 4.5 percent Asian and 4.3 percent another race.

Nearly 70 percent of the applicants held a master’s or doctorate degree, including 38 people with a doctorate in education, according to the agency.

Candidates were dispersed throughout the school system, according to the TEA, with 53 applicants from HISD district one, 36 from district two, 17 from district three, 73 from district four, 67 from district five, 36 from district six, 54 from district seven, 38 from district eight and 48 from district nine.

See here and here for some background. I don’t have anything new to add, but I guess I’m glad that there’s a decent number of applicants from each district, though we could have done better in District III. Not surprising, given the previous news about the demographic makeup of the applicant pool, that this is one of the more heavily Latino districts. We can and should continue to protest this entire process, but we should also want the selected Board to be as qualified and representative as it can be. No reason to make a bad problem even worse.

Even more Board of Managers applicants

Apr 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Maybe now they have enough.

When the Texas Education Agency in June appoints a new superintendent and nine managers to govern the Houston Independent School District, longtime educator and mother Anita Wadhwa hopes there will be someone like her sitting on the new board.

“Sometimes on boards, they don’t have people who are on the ground doing the work,” she said. “I just want to make sure that voice is represented — whether it’s with me or someone else, it doesn’t matter.”

Wadhwa is among 462 people, many of them educators, HISD parents or other professionals, who applied to the board of managers through the final deadline on Thursday night, according to the TEA. The extended deadline netted an additional 88 applications. Still, the Hispanic population remains vastly underrepresented with just 52 applicants. Latinos make up roughly 62% of the student body but 11% of the candidate pool.

“The reason for this low response has been a poor recruitment process that does not allow community input, a lack of transparency on qualifications, and a very short window of time,” said Sergio Lira, president of the Greater Houston LULAC Council, in a statement. “We feel that this is a calculated process that is meant to keep Latino numbers down.”

Forty people were disqualified from the process because they live outside district boundaries. A third of the applicants are white, nearly 40% are Black and 4.5% are Asian, according to the TEA. Nearly 70% hold a master’s or doctorate degree, including 38 people with a doctorate in education. There are many HISD teachers and employees in the mix, according a partial list of applicants, but the TEA has said those people must resign from their job if they are selected.

The partial list of names released last week by the TEA includes professionals from all spheres: attorneys, doctors, nurses, coaches, professors and educators. While many applicants have little name recognition, some have put been in the public sphere through civic leadership, prior elections and advocacy work. For example, among the applicants are Catherine Mincberg, who served as an HISD trustee more than a decade ago, and Lawrence Allen Jr., a former member of the state board of education and brother of a current HISD trustee.

When we last looked at the BoM applicants, we noted that the deadline to apply had been extended for two weeks, for unspecified reasons. I looked through the list of names in this story and didn’t see any that I hadn’t recognized from before, so either the Chron’s list wasn’t updated or nobody of sufficient renown to be spotted by the likes of me applied during that extended period. I did see Cathy Mincberg‘s name in there before, and according to her LinkedIn bio, she was a Trustee from 1983 through 1995; that “more than a decade ago” is doing quite a bit of work there. I should note, this is not at all intended as snark about Mincberg, who is also the ex-wife of former HCDP Chair and 2008 Dem candidate for County Judge David Mincberg. It was just that my reaction to the “more than a decade” descriptor was “I’m pretty sure I know the names of every HISD trustee since 2003, and she wasn’t one of them, so how much more than a decade are we talking here”. Well, now you know. Also, she was a previous applicant to the BoM.

Anyway, the same issues as before apply. Not nearly enough Latinos among the applicants. No accountability except via decree from Mike Morath. No clue, at least by me, how they’re going to be able to reach the super high metrics Morath has set. Redistricting of trustee districts still needs to be done, and there hasn’t been a bond issue since 2012; sadly, we’re no longer in a zero-interest economy, so it’s going to cost more to replenish the capital stock. Just remember, the state of Texas is now responsible for all this and more. Every single problem from now till they hand it all back, and then some, is on them.

HCC approves its redistricting map

Apr 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

In the end, what was expected.

The Houston Community College Board of Trustees approved on Wednesday a redrawn voter map that made small changes to all nine single-member districts but failed to reunify a previously split Third Ward.

The trustees approved the drawing, 8-1, with only District 4 Trustee Reagan Flowers voting against. She sought to regain the north part of the historic Third Ward ten years after her district ceded it to District 3, a predominately Hispanic area in east and southeast Houston that had lost population in the 2010 U.S. Census.

Alternate maps that Flowers favored never gained traction. Latino communities came out in force to support the plan that was voted on and approved. and election lawyers said it also contained the most equitable changes across the districts and had the least potential of diluting voter strength.

“(The map) actually rebalances you as a system,” said Lisa McBride, a partner at Thompson & Horton LLP. “It’s a little bit of impact to every single member district but it’s not so much that it actually would change any election outcome.”

The redistricting effort occurred as HCC’s District 3 once again counted population losses in the 2020 U.S. Census. Districts have to be redrawn when the population of the most populous district — now District 6, in west Houston — exceeds the population of the least populous district by more than 10 percent at the time of major Census updates.

The population estimates led the HCC board to spend the last 14 months considering various redrawn maps – all with the intent of finding places for District 6 to shed population and District 3 to expand. The trustees needed to approve a new map by the summer, in time to plan for the November election.

In approving “map 1A,” District 3 Trustee Adriana Tamez said, the board succeeded in its goals of preserving existing boundaries when possible and preserving constituent relations.

“There were challenges, including population growth in the west side of the System,” she said. “Map 1A adheres to our agreed upon criteria, with as little disruption as possible, not only for district 3, but for all districts across the system.”

See here for some background. There was definitely some opposition from Trustee Flowers and residents of the Third Ward, but the challenge of keeping that part of town all in the same district when the adjoining District 3 needed to add population required bigger overall changes, and in the end that was not the consensus choice.

On a completely tangential note, HISD still has its redistricting to do. The most recent update I have on that is from January, and with the forthcoming takeover I have no idea what will happen. If they had had an easy update to make, they’d have done it by now, but these things are rarely easy. As we know, there are still HISD Trustee elections this November, and the districts right now are not in compliance with the law. Something will have to happen sooner or later.

Our first look at the Board of Managers wannabes

Apr 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

An eclectic group, to say the least.

The Chronicle on Friday obtained through a public records request a list of people who applied to the position through the end of March. In total, 374 people applied through the deadline last Thursday, although the agency extended the application window for an additional two weeks. The second round has already netted several dozen more applicants, said TEA deputy commissioner Steve Lecholop.

“We want to make sure all Houstonians have a second chance or more time to deliberate on whether they would be good fits to serve on the board,” Lecholop said. “We wanted to make sure we captured as many Houstonians as were interested and create as deep of a pool as possible.”

So far, the applicant pool is vastly underrepresented by Hispanic community members, raising concerns and questions among some residents. The Hispanic population makes up 10% of the applicants but nearly 62% of the HISD student body, according to the TEA.

Meanwhile, 40% of the applicants are Black, 33% white, 12% other and 5% Asian, according to the state agency. The group includes many teachers or educators, parents and district alumni, according to the TEA, in addition to some community activists and one current trustee, Bridget Wade.

[…]

Meanwhile, somoe trustees at a Thursday night board meeting expressed concerns that the applicant pool included people who had previously lost in school board elections, vendors in the district and people who say they have already been chosen for the position despite an ongoing selection process.

“If you’ve already selected three to four people, and those people are stating they’re selected, then that would be disingenuous to the community,” said trustee Myrna Guidry. “Those names are out there.”

Lecholop, the TEA representative who presented and answered questions at the board meeting, said the agency has selected no one for the board of managers or the superintendent positions.

“Not a soul in Houston or elsewhere has been notified that they will be a member of the board of managers,” he said.

Among the applicants in the first round is Lawrence Allen Jr., a third-generation educator and former member of the State Board of Education. His sister, Dr. Patricia Allen, now sits on the HISD board of trustees. Both siblings and their parents served as principals in the district, Allen said, adding that he is uniquely equipped to serve in the position due to his experience with the district and on the state level.

See here and here for some background. I guess this means they’re hoping for more Latino applicants, though that’s still my inference and not anything that the TEA has explicitly said. Par for the course, us trying to guess what the TEA has in mind to do.

Be that as it may, here are some names I recognized in the applicant list. All have been unsuccessful candidates for at least one office – you can search my archives for them or click on the Tag link below to see where they have been in the past.

Hugo Mojica
Gerry Monroe
Larry McKinzie
Karen Kossie-Chernyshev
Joshua Wallenstein
Youlette McCullough
Rasuali Bray
Georgia Provost

There are also a few names I’m not sure about, because they’re sufficiently common and/or are a variation on a known past political figure. This is how they are listed and who they might be:

Anne Garcia – There was a Dem candidate in the 2020 Senate primary named Annie Garcia.
Gregory Travis – Could possibly be the former District G Council member and failed State House candidate Greg Travis.
Sandra Moore – Possibly the former Democratic candidate for HD133. I’m Facebook friends with her and see that she has a recent post about the BoM, but didn’t say anything about being an applicant herself.
Graciela Saenz – This one seems likely to be the former At Large City Council member Gracie Saenz. I’d have thought that might have been mentioned in the story if so, but who knows.

We’ll see. As for the concern about people who had failed in past runs for the Board of Trustees being appointed as a Manager, I wouldn’t bar anyone like that from the process, but I do think it would be a fair question to ask why they should be appointed when the voting public has previously rejected them. There are a number of ways one could give a satisfactory answer to that question, and a number of ways one could give an answer that ought to brand you as not being a good candidate for any position of power ever. As for why more current Trustees did not apply for the Board, that’s a question I’ll ask those who are running for re-election this fall.

TEA takeover approved by trustees

Apr 15th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

That was a formality and will be noted later in the post, but first there was this.

Members of the Houston ISD board of trustees peppered a Texas Education Agency representative with questions about the upcoming takeover at a public meeting Thursday that lasted late into the night.

More than four hours into the meeting, Steve Lecholop, the TEA’s deputy commissioner of governance, gave a slideshow presentation about the board of managers applications and transition process, while standing before elected trustees in the Hattie Mae White Educational Center.

The TEA has re-opened the window for board of manager applications until April 20 after receiving 374 applicants in the first round, Lecholop said.

Preliminary screening of applicants is now underway and applicants have been invited to attend one of two required Lone Star Governance training sessions, he said.

The presentation included information about the timeline of the takeover, the process and exit criteria for transitioning back to elected control, and the role of the elected trustees after their powers are suspended. Elected officials will be encouraged to remain in place as advisors to the board of managers, Lecholop said.

“It is really important that you guys stay involved,” he told trustees.

Several trustees raised questions about transparency and validity in the application and selection process for the board of managers. They asked about the reasons behind the takeover and the specifics of the conditions for ending state governance. Some board members said they would have preferred to hear from TEA Commissioner Mike Morath to address their questions about the takeover.

“We’d like to see Commissioner Morath to discuss all of the questions,” said trustee Kathy Blueford-Daniels.

Lecholop said the TEA has made no selections for any governance positions. He also said the future board of managers will be bound by the same laws as the elected school board, meaning meetings must be open to the public.

[…]

Later, trustee Patricia Allen asked the state representative about a scenario in which the new leadership fails to achieve the exit criteria and instead contributes to tanking student outcomes.

“What happens when they do a terrible job and we can’t get back in because they keep doing a terrible job?” she said.

Lecholop did not provide an answer, instead pointing to a successful track record in other Texas districts that have been governed by a board of managers.

“We have every expectation that the board will be successful,” he said.

Quite a bit here, but I want to focus in on three things.

1. Mike Morath still can’t be bothered to show up and answer questions in person. This is just plain chickenshit on his part. The biggest school district in the state, being taken over for past behavior that is no longer in operation, vastly unpopular among the stakeholders, and all we get is a string of functionaries. Just straight up cowardly and deeply disrespectful. I had a fair bit of respect for Mike Morath before this. He’s done a lot to shred that.

2. Why are they still taking applications for the Board of Managers? Perhaps to correct for the non-representative nature of the existing pile of applicants. I’m speculating, because Morath’s flunky didn’t say why they were doing it. That would be a valid reason if it’s true, but it sure would be nice to have confirmation. If that’s not the reason, then what is? Were there really not nine semi-decent candidates among the 374 that had applied? What does that tell you if true?

3. Trustee Allen asks a great question, which typically goes unanswered. Move along, nothing to see here. Fears that the Board will fail to meet the aggressive metrics set by the TEA are real and deserve a thoughtful response, which we aren’t going to get, but there’s another scenario to consider. It’s possible the Board of Managers won’t do anything that the existing Board of Trustees already had in place, and with the trajectory HISD is on after two years or so the metrics are met an the TEA can declare victory, claim all the credit despite having done nothing of substance, and get out. That would be both good and annoying as hell. I’m going to have to sit with that for a little while.

In the end, the baton was passed.

Despite pleas from speakers earlier in the meeting that the TEA action be abandoned and pointed questions from some of the board members following the address from TEA Deputy Commissioner for Governance Steve Lecholop, any but the most dedicated true believers had to know it was over.

Despite all the objections raised by board members, in the end they acquiesced in a 7-1-1 vote with trustee Sue Deigaard voting against and Bridget Wade abstaining (?). The HISD board of education gave their formal OK to the transition of the district from locally elected leadership to a board of managers and a new superintendent that will all be appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

I said the Board vote was a formality, in that after all this it cannot possibly be the case that a Board vote against approving the takeover would have had any effect. Maybe it would have had caused some minor bit of chaos, I have no idea. But this train is leaving the station, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it at this point. Now we wait to see who the new Board is and who gets named as the new Superintendent.

Should the HISD Board bother doing anything right now?

Apr 13th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

There’s a good case for No, and if that’s their thinking then they’re already on the way.

Houston ISD board members expressed concern Thursday about making budget cuts to campuses right before the district is taken over by the Texas Education Agency.

With a state-selected board and superintendent slated to be appointed by June, the district is in a time of transition and uncertainty, board members said. Maintaining funding levels for schools would provide some level of stability, said Trustee Sue Deigaard, who represents District V.

“It doesn’t make sense to me why we are putting our principals through this,” Deigaard said. “This new administration and board are going to come in and make a whole lot of changes to this district.”

Currently, the proposed measures would save about $62 million, according to the district, but more cuts will likely be needed to balance the $2.2 billion budget.

The district’s deficit is anticipated to grow to about $280 million by the 2024-2025 school year, if cost-saving measures aren’t implemented, according to a presentation at the last budget workshop. HISD’s savings fund would drop below the required level in fiscal year 2026.

The district plans to remove the “hold harmless” policy, which allowed campuses to be fully funded even though attendance is down. The removal of the policy would create roughly $29 million in savings. The district also made plans to make about $13 million in cuts toward the high school allotment and small school subsidies.

“I’m still bothered we added $100 million to our unassigned fund balances, but we’re cutting $40 million to campuses at an incredibly volatile time for this district,” Deigaard said, “and I don’t understand when we’re doing it with this much savings in the bank.”

[…]

District officials have gotten input from principals by attending their meetings and surveying them, Superintendent Millard House II said.

“The majority of our principals have recognized the idea of where we are at with this budget,” House said. “They really understand, and the majority of them have been supportive.”

The district is in the process of working with the TEA and their budget team who will come in on a frequent basis, starting next week, according to House and TEA officials.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath also “engaged with school leadership” at the monthly principals meeting held Tuesday, according to a statement from the district.

Although principals may be OK with the cuts, that may not be the sentiment across all campuses, trustees said.

There’s a couple of ways to look at this. One is that the Board is trying to be as responsible as it can and leave things in as stable a position as it can as it prepares to hand off power to the Board of Managers. Which could potentially include some number of current Trustees, if they applied for the positions, though I rather doubt any of them would get added. The other way is to adopt the attitude of “it’s your problem now, geniuses, you figure it out”. Not as high-minded, perhaps, but completely relatable. I don’t know what any particular Board member was thinking, but they have a lot of latitude now as far as I’m concerned.

So many Board of Managers applicants

Apr 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I sure wonder what the process to sort through all of these will be.

More than 370 people applied for nine spots on the board that will govern Houston ISD, wrapping up the first step in the Texas Education Agency’s intervention of Texas’ largest school system.

Education Commissioner Mike Morath will oust elected trustees and appoint a new superintendent and a nine-person board of managers by June 1, according to the agency, a process that some critics say has been marred by distrust from the beginning.

“Everything that has happened so far has been done in the dark,” said Dr. Audrey Nath, an HISD parent who did not apply for the position. “They have been dodging questions or not showing up to our meetings.”

Applicants for the board of managers include 232 current or former HISD parents, 136 former students and 238 teachers, according to the state agency, which released the numbers on Friday afternoon. The racial breakdown includes 40 percent Black, 33 percent white, 10 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian applicants.

The agency said it will now screen applicants with background checks, community reference checks, training and interviews. Candidates must live within the school district boundaries, according to officials.

“I am looking for Houstonians with wisdom and integrity who can be laser-focused on what is best for students,” Morath said in a written statement. “It is exciting to see so many Houstonians express a willingness to help move the school system forward in service of students.”

After getting appointed, the board of managers should improve student outcomes by “representing the vision and values of the community,” according to a job description posted online by the state agency. Roles include monitoring and supporting the superintendent, engaging with community members and creating governance systems that will ensure a smooth transition back to local control, according to the state agency.

According to the TEA, the ideal board of managers will reflect the ethnic, racial and economic diversity of the school district and include some HISD parents, community leaders and people with backgrounds in public education, social work, counseling, business, finance or law. The board members will ideally live throughout the nine existing trustee districts.

In 2019, when the state agency first attempted to take over HISD, there were 243 applicants for the board of managers, including several elected trustees.

Current board members did not respond to inquiries about whether they had submitted applications this time.

Emphasis mine. Just for yuks, the actual racial and ethic demographics of HISD are 62% Hispanic, 22% Black, 10% White, and 4% Asian. Just a wee bit off in the applicant pool there. The story doesn’t mention the economic breakdown, but I’m going to step way out on a limb here and guess that the applicant pool is considerably wealthier than the average HISD parent is. As that same page notes, 78.5% of HISD students are “economically disadvantaged”. Just putting it out there. None of this means that the Board itself will necessarily be un-representative. But they’re not off to a great start.

Also not mentioned in the story: What the process is for picking those “ideal board members”, how long it will take, and what recourse if any the public will have if they find a particular Board member to be objectionable. Oh, and are these people expected to serve the entire two-to-six years of HISD’s sentence, or are there term limits? If so, what is the process for replacing a Board member? Do they just go back to the original applicant pool, or can someone new apply? So many unanswered questions.

HISD students walk out in protest of TEA takeover

Apr 8th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Good for them.

Five minutes into her second-period class, Elizabeth Rodriguez and her classmates at Northside High School stood up and walked out to protest the Texas Education Agency’s planned intervention in Houston’s sprawling, diverse public school district.

The 18-year-old senior joined more than 100 students flooding the hallways, walking out of the large brick building and pouring into the gated courtyard by the school entrance on Quitman Street. Teenagers sporting jeans, hoodies and backpacks held handmade posters with various slogans: “My school matters,” “I am NOT just a number,” and “Estudiantes unidos! Jamas seran vencidos!”

Rodriguez, a member of a student club that helped organize the protest, stepped up on a purple platform and grabbed the microphone.

“You need to let your voices be heard,” she said to a crowd that occasionally broke out into chants. “We don’t want more STAAR. What does STAAR do? It stresses us out and gives us more anxiety.”

The walkout coincided with other demonstrations on Thursday at dozens of schools across HISD organized by Community Voices for Public Education and campus student groups. They were marching to express their displeasure with TEA’s March 15 decision to oust the board and superintendent because of one school’s repeated failure to earn an acceptable academic rating and allegations of misconduct by board members.

At elementary schools, some parents gathered with doughnuts and protest signs before sending their children into school. High school students took charge by stepping out during the school day to voice their opposition.

Thursday also marked the last day to apply for the board of managers, a governing body appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath that will replace elected trustees to oversee the district.

At the Northside High School, students rallied for about 15 minutes before heading back to class.

“I was afraid that a lot of people weren’t going to care, they were just doing it to get out of class,” Rodriguez said. “But seeing them now, holding up the signs, doing the chants, I loved it. It makes me feel good about my school.”

Later in the day, as gray skies started dumping rain, roughly 50 students at Carnegie Vanguard High School walked out and took a lap around the block during their lunch break. They held wet paper signs while chanting: “T-E-A, go away!” and “Hey-hey-ho-ho, TEA has got to go!”

Some students stayed outside to listen as their peers spoke into a bullhorn about the value of diversity and an education hard-earned by immigrant parents. One student questioned the motives of the state agency intervening in a school district serving nearly 190,000 students, largely Hispanic and Black children.

“They don’t like abortion, they don’t like gay people, they don’t like minorities,” he said about the Texas GOP. “Why do we want them taking over one of the most diverse school districts in all of Texas?”

Good question. Look, this protest isn’t going to accomplish anything at this time. Mike Morath isn’t going to suddenly change his mind about the takeover – he would argue that it doesn’t matter what he thinks, he’s compelled by the law – because some number of students chanted at him. But bringing about change starts with caring enough to do something, and enduring a bunch of getting nowhere before you can get yourself into a position of influence. It’s not linear, it’s often frustrating, and there are usually a bunch of other things that have to happen before what you want to do is even possible. It still starts with caring enough to take action. Good on these kids for doing that.

Note the bit about the deadline for the Board of Managers. Barring some action from the feds in response to the complaints that have been filed, the next milestone in this saga is going to be the naming of the Board of Managers. I’m going to guess that will happen in early to mid May, to give them some time to get their feet on the ground before the official takeover in June. We’ll get some idea of where this is going when we see who the Board is.

Second federal complaint filed over TEA takeover of HISD

Apr 2nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

From the inbox:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the ACLU, the Houston NAACP, LULAC #19, and the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday regarding the Texas Education Agency’s plan to remove locally elected officials during its takeover of the Houston Independent School District. The complaint was filed on behalf of Anna Chuter, Dr. Audrey Nath, Kenyette Johnson, and Kourtney Revels, who are parents of students at Houston public schools.

Houston ISD is the largest school district in the state and eighth largest school district in the country, made up of 274 schools and nearly 200,000 students. Earlier this month, Commissioner Mike Morath announced the agency’s plans to take over the school district citing the poor performance of some schools, despite the fact that his own agency gave the district a “B” rating in 2022. As part of the takeover, Morath intends to replace the district’s locally elected school board trustees with a board of managers who will be appointed by the commissioner and will not have any electoral accountability to Houston voters.

“The district was making a lot of progress after we voted in new trustees. That’s how democracy works,” said Anna Chuter (she/her). “The state just wants to control every aspect of our lives, and I’m afraid of how this will affect our family. My son is finally getting the special needs education he deserves, but now neither of us know what will happen.”

“I feel indignant. As a pediatric neurologist, I’m particularly concerned that the district will not get the resources it needs to support special education,” said Dr. Audrey Nath (she/her). “The state takeover is insulting to so many Houston voters like me who canvass for candidates we care about and take our local elections seriously. Apparently our choice never mattered in the first place.”

The ACLU of Texas is calling on the Justice Department’s Voting Section to investigate the agency for civil rights violations of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The state’s takeover prevents Houston voters of color from having the opportunity to meaningfully elect their candidates of choice, thereby disenfranchising voters and discriminating against them on the basis of race and national origin.

“We are asking the Department of Justice to take immediate action and investigate the state’s relentless attempts to take over the largest school district in Texas,” said Ashley Harris (she/her), attorney at the ACLU of Texas. “The state takeover is not about public education but about political control of an almost entirely Black and brown student body in one of the country’s most diverse cities. This hostile takeover strips power from Houston voters of color by replacing the democratically elected school district trustees with a board of managers handpicked by the commissioner. Our public officials should be accountable to the growing racially diverse communities they represent and serve.”

“This attempted takeover would essentially put an appointed, unelected commissioner in charge of the school district, with no electoral accountability to Houston’s voters of color,” said Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux (he/him), deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “It’s critical the Department of Justice step in to investigate potential violations of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.”

Read the Department of Justice complaint here.

See here for more on the previous complaint. As with that one, I have the same questions about timeline, process, and odds of success. I mean, I suppose either we see the Education Department do something before the Board of Managers are installed or we don’t. I do appreciate the mention of the Voting Rights Act, which I brought up way at the beginning of this process. I don’t know how much deference the federal courts will give it if it comes to that, however. At this point, all we can do is wait and see. More from the ACLU of Texas on Twitter, and the Trib has more.

Special ed and the TEA takeover

Apr 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This part of the reason for the TEA takeover of HISD is less well known and has some adherents among the key stakeholders, but it’s still quite controversial and far from clear that the TEA will do any better.

Many parents of special education students in Houston ISD who feel the school system has failed their children are deeply conflicted over news of the state takeover.

Some who say their children have been denied federally protected rights to an education believe a takeover is long overdue. Others agree accountability is needed, but question whether the Texas Education Agency has the capacity or track record necessary to execute change for the better. Both entities have received intense criticism of their delivery of special education services for decades.

“It’s a tall order to ask a failing TEA special education department to come and rescue a failing HISD special education department,” said Jane Friou, an HISD parent and co-founder of the Houston Special Education Parent Association. “I don’t understand how it’s going to get any better.”

The school system’s special education department’s “significant systemic compliance problems” was cited among the reasons in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s notice that a state-appointed board of managers will soon lead the district.

“The takeover is happening because our children’s rights are systematically and continuously violated through denial (of services) and the noncompliance of HISD,” said Marifi Escobar, a parent of an HISD ninth grader with multiple disabilities. “I want to see an overhaul of HISD. This seems to be the first time HISD is being held accountable.”

However, some advocates say they anticipate little change to the beleaguered department given that state-appointed conservators have overseen it for years.

“We, as parents, have not seen anything get better since the conservators got here,” said Fiou. “It may have actually gotten worse from a parent perspective. It’s as chaotic as ever and that makes me very concerned for whatever is coming.”

Other education experts say the state agency’s own failures to provide supports to students with disabilities doesn’t bode well for success in the district.

“TEA is the entity that receives funding from the federal government to implement (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and it is supposed to provide technical assistance, monitoring and professional development across the state,” said David DeMathews, associate professor of the University of Texas at Austin’s department of educational leadership and policy. “TEA has failed miserably doing this job for more than a decade.”

[…]

Criticism of TEA’s implementation of special education stems from its artificial cap on the number of students with disabilities who could receive services. The since-removed arbitrary 8.5 percent cap, which was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, led to the denial of services to tens of thousands of children with disabilities in Texas.

In January 2018, the federal Office of Special Education Programs announced it found TEA had failed to ensure all children with disabilities in the state were identified and evaluated. In October 2020, TEA told OSEP it believed it had completed all the required corrective actions. However, OSEP found the state had made only one of many required changes to its operations.

In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education said TEA failed to put into place many of the corrective actions it pledged to make to comply with IDEA and threatened recourse of taking away special education funding. Among the alleged shortcomings was that there was no indication districts in the state were promptly referring children for dyslexia evaluations.

Currently, TEA officials say the agency has “exceeded” the corrective actions laid out by OSEP and has increased the number of students in special education 37.3 percent since 2015.

See here for all my previous blogging on special education, which includes both the many issues at HISD and the many issues with the TEA. I have not had to interact with the special ed system at HISD, but some of my friends have and they very much say that it is a huge hassle. These are educated professional folks with resources to deal with those hassles talking, so you can extrapolate from there for folks who don’t have such resources. If the TEA can make things better here, that’s unequivocally great. There are plenty of reasons to be dubious of that possibility. As I’ve said before, it’s now 100% on them to make it happen. We’ll see.

What was even the point of those TEA “engagements” with the public?

Mar 31st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The public certainly doesn’t think it got anything out of them.

Teacher Monica Zepeda wrapped up an after-school tutoring session on Wednesday night and headed to a community forum at Delmar Stadium sporting her Pilgrim Academy lanyard. She stepped up to the microphone.

“I’m a highly effective teacher here at HISD,” she said, launching into several questions about prior state takeovers in Texas school districts. “Public education is the foundation, the bedrock of America. Do not take our education away.”

Zepeda, a public school educator of nearly two decades, was among several hundred teachers, parents and other members of the Houston Independent School District community who showed up at a third community forum hosted by the Texas Education Agency to demand answers from state officials about the takeover.

After this school year ends, the state agency plans to oust Houston’s elected school board and replace it with a nine-member board of managers appointed by Education Commissioner Mike Morath. The agency is now seeking applicants for the board of managers. The move has drawn ire from many.

“I have students from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico – and I’m making gains and growing them,” Zepeda said. “My school is an amazing little jewel in the southwest and there’s so many of us like that. There’s great teachers and I can’t believe that they want to do this.”

Morath did not attend the meeting. People in the audience immediately booed and questioned his notable absence.

“He could not be here tonight,” said TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado, who fielded questions from the podium during a meeting that ran for an hour and 20 minutes.

Morath told the Chronicle editorial board that he could not attend last week’s community forums because he was “under the weather.” Delgado provided no explanation for his absence this week. A final forum is scheduled for Thursday night at Kashmere High School.

“If he doesn’t have the respect for the people of this district – the teachers, the families, the children – to stand up and answer our questions, what kind of accountability is he really offering?” said Louisa Meacham, a teacher at Northside High School. “What kind of leadership is he really offering? None.”

I’m sorry, but if you can show up for an hour-plus interview with the Chron editorial board, you can damn well show up to the community engagement session. Not doing so is cowardly and disrespectful. Sure, the crowd has been rowdy at these meetings, but what did you expect? People have strong feelings about this, especially considering the overall health of HISD and the recent improvement at Wheatley, and they felt their voices weren’t being heard. Hell, the upshot here is to replace the elected Board with a Mike Morath-appointed Board, so of course people feel like they’re powerless. You either don’t care or you’re exceedingly dense to not realize or acknowledge that.

So again, these engagement sessions have been patronizing and useless in terms of actually addressing the concerns of the HISD stakeholders. If there was any chance of providing some assurance to students and parents and teachers that things would be all right, the TEA botched it completely. None of this should make anyone feel better about what is coming. Campos has more.

Chron editorial board interviews Mike Morath

Mar 30th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

There’s video and a transcript here. After explaining that he missed the initial TEA community engagement sessions because he was “under the weather”, he gets asked the key question:

Lisa Falkenberg 1:55
Mhmm. Okay, and then, so, we’re trying to figure out what resources will be used – as much as you can say – what resources would be used for the D and F schools that they don’t have access to now?

Mike Morath 2:10
Sure. I mean, this is the grand question: How does a school system – and certainly one as large as Houston ISD – organize itself as a system of 250-plus campuses so that the way that the district works does not allow an individual campus to lack the structures of supports for you know, a decade or more? You can’t have a situation where kids are going half a decade, or a decade, not learn how to read, write and do math at high levels. So you know, what people keep asking us is, ‘how is that going to change?’ And there’s sort of two answers to that question: The core answer of what TEA is doing is actually indirect. What we’re focused on is leadership. So we’re replacing the school board superintendent. My task is to find nine Houstonians of a character and integrity – that are student-focused – to be members of that governing body that will work together as a team and then find a superintendent that also works with that team that can then execute. Ultimately, that’s the sole focus of the agency, the way the law is set up, the way that our oversight structure is set up. It is that group of people that then have to make all of these changes. But that fundamentally doesn’t answer your question ‘what are the changes that you need to make?’ and so this gets you into all the key questions of how do you make schools work for students? Just think of the discipline of reading. So at an elementary school. There’s an elementary school in Houston, whose last acceptable performance was in 2011. So this is two entire generations worth of kids: Kindergarten through fifth grade. They have, never as a group, been exposed to a school that equipped them to rewrite or do math and do it well. So what needs to happen?

Lisa Falkenberg 4:08
What school was that?

Mike Morath 4:09
I’ll let you guys research that. So you think about elementary literacy instruction. So what we know – what evidence tells us – the evidence is compellingly clear on how the human mind acquires the gift of reading. You’ve got to make sure kids learn how to decode. That has to be taught. There’s a very specific way to do that. You do the ‘mmm’ sound before you do the ‘ph’ sound and you do that for a reason. There’s an explicit exposure, in order, to these concepts. You’ve got a bunch of random control trial-based instructional materials out there, and training, that shows this is the most effective way to do it. So you need to make sure that in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, that that kind of instruction is happening and with materials that have that kind of evidence base. That’s only part of the equation that helps kids learn how to read. Reading is also a function of background knowledge. All the words that you know and accumulate. And this is one of the reasons why you see such disparities by class in reading proficiency. Because if your parents are very well educated and have resources to take you on trips, and then you will learn things – a lot of things – outside of school, and much of that is going to affect your vocabulary and background knowledge. And that is a driver in literacy. So the question is, ‘are schools functioning as the great equalizer for literacy?’ Do they have a curriculum that is well-designed and intentional at building knowledge, about building vocabulary and is even designed to do so? So you think, well, what’s the evidence base? I’ll tell you that you need to have an instructional material and in a curricular environment the way classroom works in order for vocabulary to work. We know that if you have a set of lessons that are focused on say, ‘inferencing’ as a skill. You do something on ‘giraffes,’ and then you do something on ‘going to the ice cream store’ and then you do something on ‘World War II’ and then you do something on ‘your thoughts about balloons,’ that will not lead to any vocabulary growth. Instead, the evidence is quite clear. You have to read the same kind of texts over and over and over again. Same subject. So you read about ‘giraffes’ and you read about ‘zoos’ and then you read about the ‘African savanna.’ Then you read about the biology of necks. That sort of thing. That causes vocabulary growth. So the question is: “in the schools that have seen low levels of literacy for a decade, how well-designed is the instructional program in the curricular experience for kids so that that is actually happening?’ And this is not a new phenomenon. This knowledge isn’t even new to Houston. I think about the great Thaddeus Lott. He may be a principal y’all are familiar with. This epically famous principal that served, I want to say, at Wesley Elementary for decades. People came to his school, studied what he was doing, and he had a systematic, direct instruction on phonics. He had a strong, rigorous approach to background knowledge. Curriculum that was well-designed. Then, his approach to recruiting teachers focused on, of course, folks that had extremely high expectations; that if you come to school with a with a broken right arm and you can’t turn in a writing assignment because of it, you know, the teacher says, ‘well, your left arm is not broken.’ The high expectations that says, ‘No, we’re going to learn this. I’m here to support you, but we’re going to learn this’ and he creates a learning environment. He did this for 20 years at that school that got extraordinary results.

Gotta say, that’s an awful lot of words that sound suspiciously like the Underpants Gnome meme to me. To wit:

Step 1: Appoint Board of Managers
Step 2: ???????
Step 3: All schools are now passing!

I had to back away for a few minutes after that. I eventually went back and read some more, and he does get into specifics in a few places, so go read and listen for yourself. One thing he does say is that the Board of Managers is accountable to him, so to answer this question, if there’s a Board member that we the public think is dead weight, we need to convince Mike Morath of that. So, yeah.

HISD decides against appealing TEA takeover to the TEA

Mar 29th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The decision makes sense, whether or not the headline to this post also makes sense.

In a close vote, Houston ISD board members decided late Monday to bypass its final appeal of Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s decision to takeover the district.

Earlier this month, the board overwhelmingly voted to end the lawsuit against the TEA. They still had the option to file an appeal to the state agency, considered a last-ditch effort at preventing state intervention. These appeals hearings are not held in court but rather by a committee the commissioner selects and often do not go in the district’s favor. The board ultimately voted 5-4 against the measure.

“When it was time to give up the legal fight because we didn’t have a legal basis to continue, I was on board with that,” Trustee Myrna Guidry said. “This is an appeal that is given by the commissioner himself, giving us one more opportunity … The outcome is on the commissioner, but I believe we should take the appeal so we as a board have done everything we possibly can.”

Last week, the TEA hosted a series of informational meetings about the state intervention, which was met with outcry from the community. Shortly after the TEA’s takeover plans were announced on March 15, the community rallied in opposition to the intervention. This type of response is worth listening to, said Trustee Patricia Allen.

“I’ve heard the voice of the people. I’ve been to the community meetings. My opinion as a trustee is to listen to the voice of the people,” Allen said. “This is not a ‘must’ on the part of the commissioner. We can appeal and the commissioner can decide.”

[…]

Trustee Judith Cruz agreed the district should not spend any more money on legal counsel regarding takeover issues.

Others said they felt their chances of success with an appeal were too slim to pursue.

“Whether we file an appeal or not, there is no changing in the outcome,” Board President Dani Hernandez said. “It’s time to make a smooth transition.”

I lean in the “not worth it” direction, mostly because asking the TEA to reconsider its own decision seems highly unlikely to work. I get where Trustees Guidry and Allen are coming from, though. There might be some symbolic value in making the TEA defend itself on the record. Basically, I agree with Campos, I don’t have a quarrel with anyone’s vote on this.

There will still be HISD Trustee elections this fall

Mar 25th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Just a reminder, in case you needed it.

Although the state is preparing to appoint a board of managers this summer, local elections for Houston ISD trustees will still be held as scheduled in November.

The Texas Education Agency announced plans to replace the district’s top leadership following chronic low academic achievement at a Fifth Ward high school and prior school board mismanagement.

It’s unclear what the elected-trustees’ roles will look like once the board of managers is appointed, but they will likely serve in an advisory position, although they will have not voting power.

After about two years of the board of managers running the district, a transition timeline may be announced if HISD reaches certain goals, and elected-trustees will be phased back into the board over the course of at least two years.

Four of the nine Houston ISD school board trustees are up for re-election in November and confirmed the plan to run again.

Trustees must file their candidate application by Aug. 21.

The rest of the story is about those four incumbents – Kathy Blueford-Daniels in II, Dani Hernandez in III, Patricia Allen in IV, and Judith Cruz in VIII – and their reasons for running again in spite of it all, which mostly amount to “someone needs to represent our district” and “I know what’s going on”. I will remind everyone that Hernandez and Cruz ousted two of the former Trustees who had been involved in that Open Meetings Act issue.

What I wonder about at this point is whether anyone will file to run against any of them. Anyone can make a case for themselves as being the better alternative, but who would want the job? It’s just going to be a placeholder for some number of years, and there’s an excellent chance that future voters will hold you responsible for anything unpopular that the Board of Managers does. It’s easy enough to see why the incumbents want to stay. It’s not at all clear to me why someone else would want in right now. We’ll see.

Don’t forget the teachers

Mar 24th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I hope the Board of Managers has a plan for this.

Teachers had been shuffling in and out of Traci Latson’s classroom all day the first day back from spring break, trying to make sense of the news that broke that Houston ISD, the largest district in Texas, would be taken over by the state.

The effects of the soon-coming state intervention won’t be felt overnight. The current elected board and superintendent will be in place until the end of the school year to avoid further disruption. Then in June, a new board and superintendent will be appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.

In the meantime, Latson, a teacher at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School, and her peers throughout HISD, have questions: How will this affect curriculum? Will schools close? What major changes will this board make?

“They’re just nervous, and they don’t know what to think,” Latson said of her peers. “We’re stuck in limbo hell.”

The Texas Education Agency started holding public hearings this week to try and quell some of these anxieties, but the first one was chaotic, interrupted by shouting and leaving many questions unanswered. In the first days back from the takeover, attendance among both teachers and students seemed to be fairly normal, multiple teachers told the Chronicle. The attendance rate for students was about 90 percent.

Latson has spent nearly three decades as an HISD teacher. She taught some of her students’ parents, and in another classroom one of her former students is now the one teaching the lesson plans. Despite her history with HISD, she has began to peruse other job postings.

“I don’t want to leave HISD. I love working in the city, I love our children, and, for the most part, I have been pretty happy with the district,” Latson said. “So, it does sadden me to even admit to myself that it might be time for me to leave.”

[…]

Although there is much left unknown in the district, teachers can likely count on having their jobs next year, said Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. Contracts typically go out in May, which are binding for the next academic year.

Teachers actually have a great deal of job security, Anderson said, given the persistent teacher shortage compounded by the pandemic.

“I don’t care who runs the district. Somebody’s got to teach,” Anderson said. “It’s not like teachers are beating down the door. We started the school year with a teacher shortage that still exists.”

Houston ISD still has a vacancy rate of about 3.2 percent with roughly 336 openings, despite having one of the leading starting salary in the region at $61,500.

The district made an effort to persuade teachers to stay by awarding nearly $3.3 million in sign-on incentives for the 2022-2023 year to new teachers.

I don’t blame anyone for feeling adrift and insecure about what the future of HISD is. It would help greatly if the TEA held actually informative meetings rather than having PowerPoint shows that tell people things that are already publicly available, and it would help if Commissioner Morath could get his ass into town to talk to people. As long as there’s such a dearth of information, given how unprecedented this takeover is, it’s natural that fear and speculation would fill the void. The TEA owns all of this. It’s time they started acting like they understood the responsibility they have taken for themselves.

This is not how you win hearts and minds

Mar 23rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

18 comments

I don’t know what the TEA hoped to accomplish with its public outreach meetings about the HISD takeover, but it probably wasn’t this.

Houston community members were irate Tuesday night as state education officials tried to explain the process of taking over their school district. State officials did not take questions about the effects such a move could have on Houston Independent School District, which is the largest in Texas, but did try to recruit community members to replace the existing school board.

About seven minutes into the Texas Education Agency’s PowerPoint presentation on the impending HISD takeover, parents and community members erupted in shouts directed at TEA deputy commissioner Alejandro Delgado.

“We got questions,” attendees repeatedly yelled. “Y’all tryna take our community.”

It was the first meeting that the state agency held in Houston since it announced on March 15 that it would replace the district’s current superintendent, Millard House II, and its democratically elected school board with its own “board of managers” in response to years of underperforming schools, mainly Phillis Wheatley High School.

[…]

The TEA official attempted to finish his presentation without interruption, but community members would not stand down. They were upset that they had to write their questions down on index cards and then TEA officials would choose which questions to answer.

“This meeting was rodeo-grade BS,” said Houston ISD parent Travis McGee. “The community should have been able to speak.”

McGee and other community members were also upset that the TEA commissioner himself didn’t show up to the meeting.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, took the podium once the TEA could not take control of the meeting. She said she believes Morath has the ability to not take over the district and instead continue monitoring improvement within the schools.

“The board of managers will not be responsive to teachers, parents or children. I do want the school board to be responsive to you,” she told the audience.

The community meetings were mentioned in the earlier story about the requirements that HISD must meet to get out of takeover jail. I don’t know what I would have expected if I had been there, but 1) Mike Morath really needs to be at these things and talk directly to the people, it’s flat out disrespectful not to, and 2) “Rodeo-grade BS” is an excellent expression that I plan to borrow at some point. Stace, Campos, the Chron, and the Press have more.

PS – In re: that Press piece, I take issue with this:

Asked a direct question about why TEA thought it should take over the district, Delgado made the mistake of beginning his answer with a reiteration of all the good things about the district (like a boss talking to a disappointing employee before lowering the boom with a “but”) before starting to get to the point. The crowd, exasperated, shouted him down yelling “Answer the question.” Which he then tried to do but by then it was a lost cause.

(For the record, Morath determined HISD was in need of intervention after years of some low-performing AKA failing schools that didn’t meet state academic standards and board members that were not only dysfunctional but one convicted of corruption. Others engineered an aborted administration takeover in a private meeting in apparent violation of the Open Meetings Act. And while most of the board has switched out in subsequent elections, some members of the especially troubled times remain.)

Only two current members of the Board were there for the cited dysfunction. Only one of those two was involved in the Open Meetings Act violation. The other has not been associated with any bad behavior. Four of the five trustees associated with that Open Meetings Act violation were defeated in their subsequent election. I know that Margaret Downing, a longtime reporter of HISD doings and the author of this piece, knows all of that. I don’t know if she was just presenting the TEA’s case as they would present it without any additional context or if she chose to give it this shading. I don’t care for it either way.

UPDATE: The Chron editorial board was not impressed.

On being on the Board of Managers

Mar 22nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

When the TEA takeover of HISD was officially announced, I noted that the coverage included a link back to a list of people who had applied for the Board of Managers in 2019. I noted that there were some familiar names on that list, including three current Trustees, all prior to their eventual elections, as well as some other recognizable names.

I reached out to one of those people from the list, who I know in real life. I was curious if they had ever heard back from the TEA the first time around and if the TEA had gotten back in touch now that they were in the Board of Managers business again. They said they never went through the interview process back then because the injunction came down before that could happen, and that the TEA did reach out again via email last week about submitting another application; the deadline to do that is April 6, in case anyone reading this is interested.

I asked what motivated them to apply back then and whether they’d do it again now, and got this response:

My initial interest was really just fascination with the process and wanting to see how the interviews were going to be conducted. I never really thought I would be a serious candidate for the position. But, as you know, often times with these type of things people who are actually qualified just don’t apply because they don’t want to deal with all the BS and you end up getting a list of candidates who have extreme views one way or the other. I suspect given all that has happened that is what will be the case this time. It’s hard for me to see any real qualified candidates, wanting to deal with all the current discord between the superintendent, board, TEA, Union, community, etc.

I share that concern, though I’m perhaps a bit less pessimistic about it. It’s the TEA’s problem now, but it will very much be our problem if they make bad choices, or if they only have bad options from which to choose. We can certainly disagree about whether good people should apply to be on the Board of Managers or if good people can only get tainted by the things they would have to do on the BoM, but however it shakes out this Board is going to have power over HISD for two years or more. Whatever the risks are, I hope people who care about HISD will review the job description and qualifications and consider applying to be on the Board of Managers. I don’t think there’s any way around that.

The state’s requirements for HISD

Mar 21st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s their job to make it happen.

After forging ahead with a takeover of the Houston Independent School District, state leaders have outlined three conditions that must be met before transferring power back to the elected school board, a process that will likely take years.

Education Commissioner Mike Morath said he wants to make sure the underlying causes for intervention have been addressed before releasing the district from state control. Morath has outlined the following goals: No campuses should get failing grades for multiple years, the special education program should be in compliance with state and federal regulations, and the board should demonstrate procedures and behavior focused on student outcomes.

Local education experts say those criteria are reasonable and good benchmarks, although it will be important to hold the state accountable to those standards and get more clarity about how those goals will be met.

“They’re definitely achievable,” said Duncan Klussman, former superintendent for Spring Branch ISD. “The state’s now in control. It’s their responsibility to produce that result, and we’ll have to see what happens.”

Klussmann, now an education professor at the University of Houston, said the academic performance benchmark in particular is “a very strict requirement, a very high expectation.”

“The biggest challenge here is producing that level of academic outcome in a system that is as large as HISD, where you have those schools at that level,” he said. “In a system that large, it’s a very aggressive goal.”

The district has made academic progress in recent years under House’s leadership, lifting 40 out of 50 schools from the state’s D and F accountability list.

[…]

Catherine Horn, interim dean at the University of Houston College of Education, said the TEA’s outlined goals are actually similar to the current focus and ongoing efforts by Superintendent Millard House II and the elected school board.

“Those are really important indicators of the health of schools and the health of a district,” she said about the criteria. “I think that how those goals are achieved is going to be where the real challenge and opportunity lie.”

She said she hopes the appointed board will expand on the district’s ongoing progress and not pivot in a different direction.

Additionally, it will be important for teachers, parents and the community to get more clarity in the coming months about specific plans and decisions, she said.

“Teachers will want to hear from a board of managers their pathway for accomplishing those goals laid out by the commissioner and by the agency,” Horn said.

[…]

“The state is now responsible for their outcomes,” Klussmann said. “They’re now the entity that we all need to look at and say, ‘This is what you’ve said you expect of the system — and we’re going to hold you accountable to those outcomes.'”

Emphasis mine in all cases. For sure, it’s a big win all around if HISD meets these goals – the quicker, the better – and gets out from under the TEA’s yoke. Let’s just keep in mind two things along the way. One is that any delays, failures, hiccups, bumps in the road, what have you, are 100% the responsibility of the state of Texas. You wanted this, you got it. And two, HISD had already done a lot of the hard work to make this task easier for them, while already doing most of what the TEA says they need to do. The TEA will get credit if and hopefully when they succeed. But they’ll deserve a lot less credit for that success than blame for any failure that we all really hope doesn’t happen.

Federal complaint filed over TEA takeover

Mar 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

We’ll see if it can have an effect.

The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice this week filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that Texas is discriminating against Houston schoolchildren by taking over the majority-minority school district.

Johnny Mata, presiding officer for the coalition, outlined the allegations in a Wednesday letter addressed to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

The coalition filed the complaint on behalf of the Houston Independent School District and against the state of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, Education Commissioner Mike Morath and the Texas Education Agency, according to a copy of the letter shared with the Chronicle.

Mata said he believes the TEA is violating a federal civil rights law by taking control of HISD. The contentious takeover has sparked outrage and pushback in recent days among teachers, parents and community advocates who say the move is a political attempt to destroy public education.

“They’re asking for a fight,” Mata said about state leaders. “They’re playing games, they’re playing politics, they’re catering to their base, and that’s unconscionable.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin. This civil rights law and others extend to all state education agencies, schools and universities, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Anyone may file a complaint with the federal education department’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal civil rights laws in educational programs or activities that receive federal funding, according to the government website.

[…]

HISD may request an administrative review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings by March 30, according to the commissioner.

Mata, who is not a lawyer, said he disagrees with the state interpretation of the takeover law.

“State law is superceded by federal law and they cannot and should not discriminate against anyone,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has said she is also seeking federal intervention in the takeover by speaking with the Biden administration and other members of Congress.

A spokesperson for the federal education department confirmed that it has been in touch with Lee’s office.

“We cannot prejudge the effect of state and local decisions that have not yet been implemented,” the spokesperson said. “At the U.S. Department of Education, our most important focus is to ensure all students receive high-quality education. We always value and encourage community input in education decisions, and every school district should ensure that community rights are respected.”

See here for the background. I don’t know what the likelihood of federal action is, nor do I know what kind of timeline they might be on, or what procedural steps there may be along the way. I do feel confident that if the feds step in that the state would file its own complaint in federal court, and who knows what happens from there. It’s a lot, at least potentially. Or maybe it’s nothing, if the feds decline to act or decide they don’t have the authority. Like I said, who knows? It’s not boring, we know that much.

Asking the feds to stop the TEA takeover

Mar 18th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Can’t hurt to ask.

U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee said Thursday she is seeking federal government intervention to halt the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District.

Jackson Lee said she has been in contact with the White House frequently over the past years and is now speaking to President Joe Biden’s assistant secretary and the U.S. Office of Civil Rights

“I truly believe that this is a clearly defined matter of discrimination,” Jackson Lee said, adding that other districts have faired similarly to HISD but are not facing takeovers.

Wheatley High School, which received failing grades from the TEA for seven consecutive years, is at the center of the debate over the HISD takeover. While the TEA takeover remained in legal limbo for over three years due to a lawsuit from the district, Wheatley High School has since earned a C grade.

The TEA has said the performance of Wheatley High School is not the only reason for its decision to take over the district. TEA Director Mike Morath pointed to a corruption scandal in which trustees admitted to accepting kickbacks from district vendors as well as a state conservatorship the TEA had placed over HISD for over two consecutive years.

Lee said she has also been speaking with fellow members of Congress, and has distributed a letter criticizing the takeover.

The story notes that the Chron has not yet seen a copy of the letter; I’d have linked to it if there had been a link in the piece. I have previously suggested that federal intervention is the only possible means of stopping this now, given that passing a new law would take far too long and has at best an uncertain chance of happening. That doesn’t mean I think it has a good chance of success, or that the state would sit idly by if it did happen. My best guess is that the Education Department will review Rep. Jackson Lee’s letter but is unlikely to take action, unless they see a clear justification for it.

On that score, I will note that in a world where we still had a fully functioning Voting Rights Act, the TEA would almost certainly have had to get preclearance to sideline the elected Board of Trustees as they will be doing. (This thought is not original to me, I saw it mentioned somewhere else, maybe on Twitter, but I don’t remember where.) That doesn’t mean the takeover couldn’t have happened, just that it would have required more effort on the TEA’s part, or perhaps that the TEA would have gone about it differently. I will also note that if this is the scandal in question, it involved one Trustee who hasn’t been on the Board since 2020. It’s a thing that happened, but we should acknowledge that no current Trustees – you know, the ones who are going to be replaced – were involved.

UPDATE: The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education regarding the takeover. I’ll post separately about that but wanted to acknowledge it this morning.

So now we start processing what happened and what will happen with the TEA takeover

Mar 17th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The Chron editorial board points to three key items.

Still, if this takeover must happen — and Texas Education Agency announced Wednesday that it is indeed happening — we want it to work. Houston’s schoolchildren don’t have time for another failure. There’s no re-do for high school; these are precious years that even the most cynical politician shouldn’t endeavor to squander. Hear us on that, Governor Abbott.

Our skepticism and worry for the schoolchildren in the path of this takeover are tempered by other things: curiosity about how this experiment will work and even a glimmer of hope about what it could accomplish if TEA’s commissioner, Mike Morath, keeps his word to put kids first.

It won’t stand a chance, though, if there’s not some measure of buy-in from kids, parents and the greater Houston community. Right now, there seems to be largely outrage and fear. Trust, if it comes at all, will require transparency and integrity from Morath and the district’s new leaders.

So, how will we know if this takeover is really about improving schools and the future of Houston’s schoolchildren? Three things:

Leadership: Who will lead the district?
Morath said the next superintendent to lead the 187,000-student district would be appointed in the summer but the name of the person is less important than his or her qualifications and character. Ideally the person would have knowledge of Houston or at least Texas. Most important, though, is experience running a large district and overseeing a successful turnaround. The next HISD leader should be reform-minded but not for reform’s sake. Morath has acknowledged that much is working well in the state’s largest district and many kids are “flourishing,” as he told The Houston Landing’s Jacob Carpenter. The next leader should build on that and endeavor to scale it up across the district so that more kids can know the rigor and high expectations of a Carnegie Vanguard High School, the expertise of a Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions and the inspiration of a Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

As for the board of managers expected to replace HISD’s elected board of trustees in June, we implore Abbott to keep the cronies to a minimum. The state should appoint a good mix of educators, parents, business leaders – all of them ideally from the Houston area. They should have a stake in the results but be free of conflicts that could compromise their judgement. We’re glad to see that Morath, in his interview with The Landing, encouraged “people of integrity and wisdom” who are “interested in supporting kids, who truly love kids” to apply “soon” at the TEA website for positions on the board. When this takeover was initially announced in 2019, a diverse group of nearly 250 people applied to serve on the board of mangers and some underwent training. In the three years since, the process was paused by lawsuits. TEA is beginning anew, but not from scratch, given the pool of volunteers who have raised their hands to help.

Strategy: Is the plan based on evidence or politics?
We know what works in education, and no, it’s not merely more money, smaller class sizes or even parental involvement. Those things can help but only in certain contexts, as Amanda Ripley wrote in her 2013 bestseller The Smartest Kids in the World: and how they got that way. Generally, the ingredients to quality public education, according to research, are higher standards, better trained, supported and paid teachers to implement the higher standards, plus accountability to ensure that they do. The state, via the new leaders chosen, will have the space to innovate and perhaps make bold decisions that would normally be politically unpopular if an elected board were still calling the shots. But the guiding star must be best practices. What has truly been proven to work, not just in this country, but in other nations where student performance far outpaces our own.

[…]

End game: This takeover should lead to reform, not purgatory.
There’s a reason “independent” appears in the names of districts across this state. We believe, as do many Texans, that local public school should be run locally, by elected leaders accountable to the public. The TEA must outline a clear plan of action and a timeline to get the work done promptly. Morath told The Landing that he doesn’t expect state control over HISD to last longer than the typical two to six years. But how will we know when the problems that triggered this takeover are solved? It should be clear to all based on clearly defined standards and benchmarks that TEA sets for gauging success. The state agency has already articulated some of these: no campus should receive a D or F state rating for multiple years, the district’s special education program must comply with federal and state requirements, and, more generally, more time during school board meetings should be devoted to discussing student outcomes versus discussing administrative factors, the Chronicle reported. More specificity is needed but these terms seem relatively modest and doable.

I think we’ll know a lot from the announcement of the Board of Managers, and from the naming of a Superintendent. As I noted yesterday, three current Board members, all elected since that initial round of recruitment, were on that list of 243 names. We could get some decent selections, or we could get a bunch of hacks and cronies. The same is true for the Superintendent, and while Mike Morath says he’s bound by the law to pick someone, I don’t see why he can’t name Superintendent House as his choice. We’re in uncharted territory, if you really want to do what’s best then do the obvious here.

The other two items will flow from the first. A decent Board will want to follow best practices and implement genuine improvements – and here I will say that I’d like to hear what that Board ought to do that wasn’t already at least being discussed by this Board – and want to get out in a timely fashion. The first of these should again be clear to us from the beginning, the second may take time to become clear, though having clear objectives and metrics to determine them up front will help a lot. The less we hear from Greg Abbott and the usual crowd of enablers the better. I do actually think Mike Morath wants this to work, if only for his own legacy, and the best way for that to happen is for him to be more or less left alone by Abbott. Like I said, go put your own name forward for this Board if you can. Let’s put that first principle to the test now.

And keep up the pressure wherever you can.

With the news today of the Texas Education Agency taking over Houston Independent School District, Democrats in the Texas House warned that Houston ISD was set up to fail through a lack of funding and state support and that it could be the precursor to other state takeover attempts of districts around the state for political reasons.

“When it comes to TEA, you can’t be the arsonist and the firefighter,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat and chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Democrats argued during a Wednesday afternoon press conference that school funding in Texas has lagged behind inflation for years, that teachers are paid so poorly they’re leaving the profession in droves and that retired educators are languishing in poverty because of the lack of inflation adjustments to their benefits over the last several decades.

The underfunding has brought huge challenges for schools, especially those in large school districts like Houston ISD where there are many children from lower-income families, they said.

They pitched a plethora of fixes, including increasing the basic per-student funding number by far more than Republicans have proposed, shifting the funding model from one based on attendance to one based on enrollment and giving retired teachers significant benefit bumps.

Although Democrats are the minority party in both the House and the Senate, Martinez Fischer said he believes the House will need to vote on certain measures that require 100 votes to pass.

Since Republicans don’t have enough votes to do that on their own, he thinks he has leverage to press for some priorities — with investment in public education “at the top” of that list.

One bill they said they hoped to win bipartisan support for was brought by Rep. Alma Allen, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the House Public Education Committee. It would give the TEA the option to decide against the takeover of school districts, as is happening now with Houston ISD. The agency says its hands are tied legally, and it must move forward with the takeover.

As we have discussed, there’s not much that can be done about the current situation other than holding Morath and the TEA and the future Board of Managers to the promises that have been made about what the goals are of this whole thing, but using whatever leverage Dems have to pass the takeover modification bills is a good use of their time. At least we can try to prevent this from happening again. The Trib and the Texas Signal have more, as do Stace, who fears that any good people on the Board of Managers will be tainted by the bad things it is likely to do, and Campos, who encourages “good, smart, and decent folks to sign up”, have more.

The TEA takeover has begun

Mar 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

At least the suspense is over. That’s the extent of my optimism about this.

State education leaders notified the Houston Independent School District on Wednesday that they are resuming the process of stripping all power from the district’s elected school board and giving it to a soon-to-be appointed governance group – a long-anticipated move that faces strong opposition from many Houston-area politicians, educators and families.

The announcement, which largely stems from a state law mandating sanctions against districts with chronically low-rated campuses, follows a Texas Supreme Court ruling in January that lifted a temporary injunction blocking the elected board’s ouster. It now sets the stage for the largest state takeover of a public school district in modern American history, while also throwing the future of HISD into further doubt after years of board dysfunction and leadership upheaval.

“In each of these cases, we have to look at what is in the best interest of students and what are the root causes that require state intervention in the first place,” Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said. “In this particular case, it’s about the leadership at the top. Making sure that we have a school board that is focused on ensuring that all kids in Houston, not just some kids in Houston, have access to great schools.”

The replacement governance team, known as a board of managers, will assume responsibility for setting HISD’s budget and districtwide policies, among other tasks. State leaders have not announced who will serve on the board of managers, though Morath told the Houston Landing this week that he expects to name replacements and transfer control to them no earlier than June 1.

Morath also confirmed that he plans to replace HISD Superintendent Millard House II – an authority given to him when appointing a board of managers – with a yet-to-be-named district leader once the replacement board takes power.

Boards of managers in Texas historically have held power for roughly two to five years before transferring authority back to elected trustees. Morath said he sees no reason to expect the HISD board of managers’ reign would extend beyond that range.

The state’s planned takeover is primarily tied to a state law passed in 2015 with bipartisan support. The law mandates one of two sanctions – the appointment of a board of managers or closure of low-rated campuses – in any district with a school that fails to meet state academic standards for five straight years. HISD’s Wheatley High School triggered that law in 2019 when it received its seventh consecutive failing grade.

In moving to replace HISD’s elected board, Morath has also cited the prolonged presence of a state-appointed conservator in the district and a state investigation that found multiple instances of trustee misconduct, such as violations of Texas’ open meetings laws and improper attempts to steer vendor contracts. Morath has the legal authority to install a board of managers on both fronts – though he’s not required to do so.

[…]

Morath said state officials will soon reboot their process for identifying replacement board members, an undertaking they began in late 2019 before the issuance of a court injunction. He reiterated a commitment to appointing a replacement board composed of HISD residents, and added that he would “prefer people who do not have ideological blinders, one way or the other.”

“They need to come in with wisdom and eyes wide open and make decisions in a very complex environment that are in the best interest of kids,” Morath said. “And this requires people that can think very, very clearly. That have an understanding of creating a culture of servant leadership and systems leadership. There’s not any specific agenda other than what is in the best interest of kids that we want to see pursued.”

However, hundreds of attendees at several recent protests opposing the takeover have voiced fears about Abbott’s education commissioner appointing managers who will push for charter school expansion and other policies favored by Republicans.

“Ultimately, I am really confused about what the end game is for Morath and Abbott,” state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said earlier this month. “If your objective is to make sure schools are run correctly, this is not the right way to do it. The takeover of school districts in the past, in my experience, have been school districts that are completely dysfunctional.”

Ultimately, the appointed board will have some incentive to implement policies that curry favor with local residents. If the board of managers defies the popular consensus in HISD on major issues, the elected board could immediately reverse those decisions upon retaking power in the coming years – a scenario that would cause even more disruption in a district craving stability. Morath said he expects the replacement board to remain engaged with HISD residents, leaders and trustees.

Elected board members will retain their seats, though they will not hold any power. Board elections will continue uninterrupted, with four races still scheduled for November.

“We don’t know who’s going to be on the board of managers, what connections they will have to the community, so I’ll be making sure they have somebody letting them know what the community wants and playing an advisory role,” HISD Board President Dani Hernandez said.

Much of this article is taken from their interview with Morath. Heck of a scoop, I guess. We did have some indications of this late on Tuesday, as there were takeover docs briefly posted on the TEA’s website; they were later removed from view as this was apparently jumping the gun.

The Chron story on those prematurely-released documents also included a link to the list of people who had applied for the Board of Managers in 2019, which was the last time we went through this exercise, before the HISD litigation put it all on hold for what turned out to be three years. Of interest, and as a reminder that there’s been quite a bit of turnover on the HISD Board since then, three of those applicants are now incumbent Trustees: Patricia Allen, Kathy Blueford-Daniels, and Judith Cruz. Current HCDE Trustee Amy Hinojosa is in there as well. I recognize some other former candidates, and a parent of some former classmates of my daughters. I wonder if Morath had any favorites from that list, if there’s anyone that the TEA will encourage to apply again. Be that as it may, I’d say anyone who’s mad about this ought to apply to be on the Board themselves. May as well make sure there are at least a few people we can trust in the process.

On a related note, here’s another story about how state takeovers of school districts usually don’t accomplish anything worthwhile, not just in Texas but around the country.

From Massachusetts to Mississippi and California to Kentucky, state officials in recent decades have increasingly responded to school districts struggling with poor academics or financial woes by usurping local control and pledging to turn around the schools.

But these state takeovers, according to a recent study, are mostly ineffective.

“The best evidence we have shows that takeovers don’t often achieve their intended results, don’t improve student achievement and don’t yield better outcomes for kids,” said Josh McGee, an economist at the University of Arkansas. “There are cases where we have seen improvement — but those are few and far between.”

McGee, associate director for the university’s education policy office, was referencing a 2021 study conducted by Beth Schueler from the University of Virginia and Joshua Bleiberg at Brown University. In the first cross-state comparison of its kind, the researchers examined all state takeovers from 2011 to 2016 and, on average, found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.”

The study shows varying results among districts across the country. In general, state takeovers are far from uniform since officials making different policy choices within different contexts. Research shows that some schools appear to have benefited from takeovers while others have tanked.

The TL;dr of this is that the situations in which state takeovers tended to do best are those with school districts that are well below standards. HISD, with its overall B rating and 94 percent of schools rated C or better, does not meet that criteria. The main issues with schools that perform poorly are poverty and other socioeconomic factors, which are best dealt with via greater resources. I’m sure you can surmise what the odds of that are with HISD. Beyond that, and again stop me if you’ve heard this before, most state education departments don’t have the experience or the tools to make a difference. The best you can say is that they don’t really do any damage while they’re in charge.

We’re in uncharted territory here. I encourage you to read that Houston Landing interview with Mike Morath, and their FAQ about what it means. Whatever else I might say, he just doesn’t sound like he’s thrilled to be in this position. I don’t know if that means anything, but it was my impression. The takeover happens in June. In the meantime, apply to be on the Board, make a pledge to hold that Board’s feet to the fire, and let’s try to finally knock Harold Dutton out of the Lege next year. The Chron, Reform Austin, the Press, and the Trib have more.

HISD ends lawsuit against TEA

Mar 11th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A formality at this point.

The Houston Independent School District board voted on Thursday night to end its lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency, effectively ending the district’s legal fight against an attempted state takeover.

The motion passed with support of eight of the nine trustees following a brief closed session. Trustee Kathy Blueford-Daniels, who represents District II which includes Wheatley High, voted against the measure.

Superintendent Millard House II said he does not know what the board’s decision will mean for the state’s takeover effort because that agency has made no announcement or decision.

“That was a board decision in an effort to get to the table to have conversations with TEA,” he said in an interview following the meeting. “There hasn’t been conversation.”

Dani Hernandez, board president, said the board remains committed to students and student outcomes.

“We are now at the point where it is time for us to move forward,” she said during the meeting. “It is in our students’ and our employees’ best interest for us to end this lawsuit between HISD and TEA and navigate and build relationships between all the parties. … We look forward to bringing both organizations to the table soon for the best interest of children.”

The district is withdrawing from the lawsuit to “end further expenditure of district resources, as there is no further legal recourse,” according to the motion.

[…]

In theory the district could file for a rehearing and continue the legal battle. HISD did request more time to file a motion for a rehearing in late January, but never ended up following through on it.

Given the Texas Supreme Court decision, the board’s decision to stop putting resources toward the lawsuit makes sense, said attorney Christopher L. Tritico, who has represented three Houston-area districts — North Forest, Beaumont and La Marque — in takeover hearings.

“A rehearing is one in a million, and it’s just not worth it. I think they are making a prudent decision in public funds at this point in recognizing the decision is over,” Tritico said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t conceding that they think the commissioner is right, they just don’t have any legal maneuvering.”

I agree with the Board’s actions here. The one trustee who voted against was Kathy Blueford-Daniels, whose district contains Wheatley. I can’t blame her for that.

We have reached the weekend and still no word from the TEA. According to Campos, “there was supposed to be a meeting in Austin yesterday that had to be postponed”. No rush, y’all, take all the time you need. The Press has more.

Wheatley’s fate

Mar 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

We may learn today of the TEA’s intentions with HISD. Whatever does happen, let’s remember that in the end this will affect a lot of people, and some of them are not happy with the position they’ve been put in.

Samuel Ollison, a junior at Phillis Wheatley High School, already has started working on his back-up plan.

He spends his free time looking into schools he should attend senior year because Houston ISD may be taken over by the Texas Education Agency at any moment, and he has heard rumors his school may close.

“I’m nervous, honestly,” Ollison said. “They say my school is the No. 1 factor in why TEA is taking over HISD …We just need to do better at this school because I really don’t want Wheatley to get shut down, or for the TEA to take over.”

It’s an uncertain time for students at Wheatley High School, as the 96-year-old Fifth Ward campus continues to be thrust in the spotlight for its multiple failing accountability grades that puts the district at risk of losing its superintendent and elected board. Meanwhile, rumors are circulating about what will come of a possible state intervention, leaving parents and students alike in fear of the school’s closure.

Ollison grew more concerned when read an article in which Mayor Sylvester Turner said Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath told him he has two options — appoint a board of managers or close Wheatley high school. Other public figures since have made similar comments.

State code indicates that closing a school is an option, but the TEA never has stated that it plans to. Morath has spent years pursuing the other option — appointing a board of managers, which temporarily was blocked by an injunction. However, the TEA declined to comment on the mayor’s remarks or if intends to close Wheatley.

[…]

Throughout the years, the school’s enrollment began to drop, and subsequently the dollars tied to that enrollment. By 1976, the school was in the bottom 12% for reading scores, according to a 1978 Texas Monthly article. In 1995, the Fifth Ward school had the highest dropout rate and lowest math score of the high schools in the Houston ISD.

From 2014 to 2017, it earned an “improvement required” rating from the state, and in 2019, under a revamped accountability system, the school earned an ‘F.’ Ratings were paused in 2018 for Hurricane Harvey and in 2020 and 2021 for COVID.

In 2022, the school earned a ‘C,’ but some argue that the standards were lowered.

Either way, the previous streak of failing ratings, in part, triggered a takeover battle that has been slowly making its way through the courts.

Joseph Williams took the helm of the school as principal in 2018, not long after the district was put on alert for a potential takeover. When Williams first took the job — he knew “time was of the essence.” His first priority was to improve the school’s culture and the morale.

“In some cases, there was apathy with some of the scholars,” Williams said. “We just wanted to revive the spirit. When you just keep hearing your name and its associated with this negative thing, it can kind of wear on you.”

He tightened up the attendance policy, restructured the classroom layout to make sure grades were grouped together, allowing administrators to better monitor students.

They implemented an online merit system, where teachers could award students points for good attendance or high scores. They could cash in the points they earned for snacks or a free hoodie. The school saw some modest improvements on test scores and earned a C for its most recent accountability rating. This is a point many education advocates, lawmakers, and critics of state intervention make when talking about the potential takeover.

There’s more in the story from current students and their parents, who are trying to figure out what their options would be if Wheatley is closed. I don’t think that will accomplish anything positive, especially with the school on a better path now. You know my feelings on this, so I’ll just leave this here. And I hope that tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that, I don’t have to write about what happens next in a post-takeover world.

HISD

Calendar

Search

Categories

Archives

My linkage

Polling Texas 2020

Polling Texas 2018

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities

Categories

Archives

Calendar

Pages

Meta