State Rep. Harold Dutton is known to go toe-to-toe with members of his own party on education issues
When the future of the Houston Independent School District was at stake, he made a decision that eventually placed him back on the chopping block against his Democratic legislative colleagues.
In 2015, Dutton added an amendment to House Bill 1842 making it possible for the Texas Education Agency to take over HISD. It was in response to the constant low academic performance of his alma mater, Wheatley High School.
Now that the years-long legal battle over the state’s proposed intervention has come to an end and the state is on its way to prepare for the transition this summer, that hasn’t stopped his critics from reminding him of his decision.
A move he says he still does not regret.
The Defender had a one-on-one conversation with Dutton to understand his position on the TEA takeover.
Defender: You’ve been open about how you never thought this takeover could happen when you created the bill. Take us back to your thought process when you decided to create it in 2015.
Dutton: It goes back further than 2015. It started in 2003 actually. I started to do things on the public education committee regarding schools that were failing. Because in 2002, that was Wheatley’s 75th anniversary, and what I did was I had an event called ‘The Purple and White Gala.’ It was a gala honoring all the Miss Wheatleys’ up to 2002. And what I did was I got their pictures and bio and put it on a wall. I noticed that the earlier Miss Wheatleys all had significant educational accomplishments and had employment that was absolutely superb.
So, I decided to take a further look at the schools in my district, Kashmere and Wheatley, where I graduated (from) and I live in Kashmere Garden. That was why it became important. I saw that Kashmere had been low-performing for years and it was because they hadn’t done well on the math portion of the standardized test. I found out that they didn’t have a certified math teacher at Kashmere. Nobody had ever tried to or desired to put a certified math teacher in their so they could help these students.
I started asking around about why HISD had certified math teachers, but didn’t put one in Kashmere? Some of the board members thought it wasn’t their problem because that wasn’t the area they represented. I said, “No; you may get elected in a certain area, but you represent all of HISD.” They disagreed.
So, I talked to the committee chair who was doing a bill on campus turnovers and he asked how would I fix the situation? I said if we have an amendment that says if one campus in a school district is failing for five consecutive school years, then TEA can come and takeover the school district. This bill got their attention because not only did it affect HISD, but 1,200 school districts at the same time.
Before the bill was passed, there were 190 campuses that were failing. After House Bill 1842 passed with the amendment on it, that number when down to 77. Unfortunately, what HISD did was nothing when it came to the chronically underperforming schools–schools that have been failing the longest.
So, in 2019, Wheatley was the school that failed the longest. My thoughts were that HISD and no other school district would ever let a school fail for five consecutive school years. I thought they would do something to turn it around. So, that’s how we got here.
Defender: With everything that has happened since TEA’s announcement, do you feel responsible for what has happened?
Dutton: That’s like saying the guy who comes with the ambulance to pick up the guy who is shot is somehow responsible. It’s HISD’s responsibility to educate students and when they let them fail, they should be punished.
Defender: What can you say TEA will bring to the table that school boards could not?
Dutton: I think what’s going to happen with the Board of Managers is the schools that have not been getting the kind of resources brought to them so they’re not consistently failing, they’re going to get that. That’s what I’m hoping happens, anyway. We can’t stay where we are, because we are going to keep getting what we’re getting.
Defender: Can the law that allowed the takeover be changed? Would you consider creating another to overturn the decision?
Dutton: No. Why would I do that for failing schools? We’ve got to give more options for these kids who have gone out and done dumb things, engaged in criminal activity, because we simply didn’t educate them. We’ve left them with a bunch of negative alternatives and yet we are looking for options for HISD? That don’t make sense.
Defender: If a takeover of the state was not on the table as a plan to improve the performance of the schools—what other alternatives would be on the table?
Dutton: I’ll talk to you about what I did. Back in 2003, I created a bill that would’ve allowed HISD to be divided into four subparts, and each subpart would elect the superintendent. That bill failed. Later, what I did was, I looked around and saw the number of failing schools in Texas. I tried to create what I called the “Texas Opportunity School District,” where we would take all the failing schools and put them into the district, have the state manage them, get them all refitted, and then return them back to the school district they came from. The bill made it to the floor, but it failed because of the people whose districts included the failing schools. So, I’m not sure what other option you can do.
Defender: A lot of parents, student, teachers are shocked that this decision is happening during spring break, and are worried. What do you want to say to them?
Dutton: They should be concerned about failing schools. About not giving kids the future to the point where they have nothing but negative options in the future. That’s what they need to be concerned about. I hope they will get on HISD and ask them why they didn’t follow the law. This is a law that affects every school district in the state. Why is HISD the only one yelling that they don’t like the law?
When the law was passed, the NAACP was for it, American Federation of Teachers was for it. Everybody was for it. I suspect they were for it for the same reason I was. We never thought anybody would let a school fail for five consecutive school years. But today they are saying all kinds of things because they don’t want to own up to the fact that we’ve destroyed these children’s lives by failing them educationally.
