Houston ISD rolled out its plan to sunset and relocate magnet and career and technical education programs across several of the district’s high schools. School district officials held sessions to inform parents of the logistics behind the redirection, but community members complained about a lack of communication regarding the location and dates of the meetings.
At a community meeting held at Wheatley High School, State Senator Borris Miles looked around the room and asked district officials, “Raise your hand if you’re community and not staff…there’s more staff here than community.”
Miles then demanded to know how HISD had notified families about the meeting. The low attendance came just weeks after HISD’s state-appointed board placed major magnet program changes on its December agenda. This move, parents say, left them scrambling to respond to a decision that was already well underway.
In December, the HISD board first floated the idea of ending on-campus magnet programs, like graphic design, entrepreneurship and web development, and expanding its CTE offerings to include more “high-wage” and “high-demand” jobs, such as health informatics, engineering and networking systems.
What are the changes?
HISD is expanding its CTE offerings for students at 10 high schools to the Barbara Jordan Career Center.
Starting next school year, students from Furr, Heights, Sam Houston Math, Science, and Technology Center, Kashmere, North Forest, Northside, Waltrip, Booker T. Washington, Mickey Leland, and Wheatley High Schools will have the option to choose from 16 programs of study.
HISD expects its enrollment at the BJCC to grow from its 906 students to nearly 4,000 in the 2028-29 school year. To maintain classroom sizes, the center will operate in shifts with 900 to 1,000 students on campus at a time.
District officials say the move will reduce waitlists for popular courses, allowing students to choose these training programs starting in ninth grade.
“We know that too many of our graduates historically are not earning a living wage when they leave high school,” said Gillian Quinn, executive director of Career and Technical Education. “We believe that every HISD graduate deserves as many pathways to a life of financial choice as possible.”
A Good Reason Houston analysis found that only 17% of HISD graduates are earning a living wage in Harris County six years after graduation, a key consideration in HISD’s decision.
In terms of logistics, students will be picked up and dropped off at their home campus two to three times a week, including accommodations for students with special educational needs.
What HISD already decided in December
Parents first learned about the closures not through outreach, but through the Dec. 11 board agenda. It was there that the administration proposed eliminating or relocating magnet and CTE programs at Kashmere, Northside, and Heights high schools. It’s a plan that was later expanded to include Furr, Mickey Leland, North Forest, Sam Houston, and Waltrip.
At that December meeting, the board was forced to pull the item after facing backlash, postponing it until January.
Students and parents used the December public-comment period to warn about what would be lost. Student Micah Gabay told the board that programs such as web development, graphic design, culinary arts, and entrepreneurship were not extras but “real skills, dual credit, and motivation to stay on track for college and careers.”
During the information sessions, administrators emphasized that students would be trained in fields such as healthcare, IT, cybersecurity, trades, engineering, and business. HISD referred to a 2025 study, which used Houston labor market data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and stated that these fields lead to “high-wage, high-demand” jobs.
Additionally, the study revealed that programs like arts, audio/visual technology, and communications were not meeting the minimum wage threshold requirements for HISD graduates and were eliminated.
“It is more sustainable to invest in one facility as enrollment is declining across multiple campuses,” said Jessica Leonard, HISD’s director of CTE Programming. “Automotive and EV…one station is $130,000, but across five programs, that’s over a million dollars. But we can take one program and invest all that money there. So even if a program is still declining, we’re not pulling it away.
“If we were to keep it as it is, over time the funding will decrease, ’cause enrollment is decreasing. So what we’re doing is planning for their future. We want to make sure we have facilities that are being maintained. Does that mean that the programs that will be here will be neglected? Absolutely not.”
HISD staffers also assured parents that the BJCC has enough seats for interested students in each program, accommodating space for up to 45% of students from every campus.
Parents: these weren’t real community meetings
The January information sessions were intended to gather community input. Instead, many attendees said they felt the meetings were designed to justify a decision that had already been made.
“We all care about our kids, but it’s happening too fast,” said newly elected HISD trustee Maria Benzon. “There should be more opportunity to build this together as a community than to be told ‘This is what we’re gonna do.’ We need to have more transparency in the information about who you’re speaking to.”
Parents and community members also raised concerns about what happens when magnets are stripped from neighborhood schools.
Kathy Blueford-Daniels, a former HISD trustee, warned that families will simply go elsewhere if they have to bus across town for programs their schools already have. She argued this proposal would cut per-pupil funding and accelerate enrollment decline, the same pattern that has preceded past HISD school closures.
That concern was echoed in December. Speakers warned that HISD removing magnets would destabilize schools that are already struggling to keep students.
Brandon Dickerson, principal of Kashmere High School, told the Defender that the redirection to the BJCC was a cost-cutting measure for the school.
“Moving all of it to the one facility to make certain that kids have an opportunity and it doesn’t cost as much,” Dickerson said. “Our kids have an understanding of what it looks like four years out versus going to a college or university. If you teach them now what those things are, you can get them the mentorship, the support, and by the time they graduate, they can take care of themselves.”
What happens next
The postponed magnet-closure vote is now scheduled to be returned to the Jan. 15 HISD board meeting for a vote.
If approved, programs like graphic design at multiple high schools will stop accepting new students next year and be phased out entirely by 2030.
The proposal also intersects with broader district facilities planning. In November, Miles announced plans to finance a new CTE center using approximately $180 million in lease-revenue bonds, a financing mechanism that does not require voter approval.
