Ahead of the new school year starting on Aug. 12, Houston ISD’s teachers, parents, and teachers’ union representatives rallied in Downtown Houston to voice their concerns about the Texas Education Agency (TEA) takeover of the state’s largest school district.
A year into the takeover, the district is facing yet another backlash from community members: this time, against the new proposed HISD bond, amounting to $4.4 billion. The consensus among speakers during the last school board meeting echoed the same sentiment – “no trust, no bond.”
“HISD, the children, the staff, and the community… we need a bond, but we cannot trust this management team in place right now. We will be all for a bond when we have an elected board of trustees, and a competent certified superintendent to be the management team for such. Up until then, no trust, no bond,” Christie Machelle Brewster, a retired school nurse who served in her role for more than three decades, told the Defender.
In the 2024-25 school year, HISD will have 130 New Education System (NES) schools, which the TEA-appointed superintendent Mike Miles introduced last year.
Over 4,000 employees, including 2,400 teachers, left HISD in June, reported the Houston Chronicle, of which 75% were voluntary. Since the takeover, more than 10,000 people have left the district, comprising 4,700 teachers.
How are the NES schools doing?
Miles’ new plans for HISD showed strong improvement in state test scores this year. For years, HISD’s Black and Brown students have trailed behind white students in academia.
However, STAAR results show above-average growth on standardized tests, which suggests that HISD has been closing the achievement gap in grade levels since the superintendent announced an overhaul last year.
According to HISD data, HISD students improved in STAAR Algebra I, English I, English II, and Biology, and in some cases, “exceeded pre-COVID proficiency levels.” The number of 3-8 graders proficient in math and reading increased while reading proficiency in all tested grades surpassed pre-COVID levels. Moreover, the number of students proficient in math at every grade level also improved.
However, some schools were placed under high pressure to enhance scores, causing mental health concerns among teachers and students.
A high school teacher at Wheatley High School, who preferred to remain anonymous, says the atmosphere at the school is a “high-anxiety environment.” Recently, a teacher had to go on a medical leave because she had “extreme anxiety attacks,” she recalled.
The school, located in the Greater Fifth Ward with a 99.7% minority enrollment (55.2% Black and 43.9% Hispanic students), triggered the TEA takeover of HISD when it failed to meet TEA’s academic standards for seven consecutive years.
The teacher says she has observed a lack of accountability on campus, coupled with despair from students who are expected to behave in a “robotic” way with very little time to do independent work. If a student falls behind, teachers are instructed to reteach the lesson.
“How can you reteach on the fly?” she wonders. “The parents expect to go and make noise every time they don’t like something, but they don’t understand that the superintendent is not fireable. There’s no power and no authority to get rid of them.”
One strategy always worked for her students, she says — going up to the board and working out a problem while other students learned. She noticed children feeling empowered when their turn came and engaged them. However, this is no longer allowed in the classroom.
“Another thing is they say that they want you to internalize the lessons. You’re supposed to write down notes on what you think the kid may not understand. That process is a joke because they bombard you with so much other stuff during your planning period that you never really get to it,” she recalled.
Teachers are tasked with the internalization of lessons, which “takes hours” and often prolongs after work hours. A majority of her co-workers, too, are unable to call it a night until after midnight. They are expected back on campus at seven in the morning.
The constant evaluations, too, stress teachers and students out, the teacher says.
The Monday after Hurricane Beryl struck Houston, the executive director of the school came in and conducted “full evaluations of every single class.”
“The kids were looking like, ‘Why is he here?’ There were people who didn’t have lights. We were drained because we had to come, they threatened people that if you miss too many days, you would be fired,” she told the Defender. “They [students] came to school, some displaced, but their minds were not ‘let me go ahead and be a robotic learner today.’”
She admits that the scores have been better. The percentage of Wheatley students who met grade level increased in each subject except U.S. History compared to last year.
She advised, “Loosen up on the NES model. If they had allowed us to put our own creative spin on it and not create anxiety in such a draconian environment, then the scores would’ve been much higher.”
Working in a majority-minority enrollment school, the teacher, who is Black, says she has discussions with other teachers of color on the campus that lived through segregation. “They said this was segregation, meaning you can’t say certain things because you never know who’s gonna hear. And if it gets back to the wrong person, then all of a sudden, something happens to you. It truly feels like Jim Crow [laws].”
The impact of budget cuts weighs heavy on some children
Earlier this year, Miles trimmed down teams of wraparound specialists on campuses. These specialists provided non-academic support to students, such as food and shelter, medical needs, legal support, social and recreational services, and immigration support. Their duties have now shifted toward attendance and dropout prevention and referring students to HISD’s Sunshine Centers.
HISD conducted layoffs and reduced its budget to $2.1 billion for the upcoming school year, $110 million less than last year, citing a budget deficit of $528 million due to federal COVID-19 relief funds or “ESSER dollars” drying up and declining student enrollment.
Many of these wraparound specialists served students struggling with poverty-related issues like hunger and homelessness. The Wheatley High School teacher has observed its impacts.
“We have lots of homeless children on our campus that need basic needs. We have children who literally need groceries, shoes, clothes, soap, lotion, shampoo, and sanitary napkins to take home from the campus. They no longer have wraparound people,” she said. “The Sunshine Center is not on campus, but it’s supposed to be a hub that supports multiple campuses.”
However, these centers require students to make an appointment first and then reach the center. One parent in particular needed a professional outfit for an interview: “a simple dress, a black skirt, a white top.” When the campus failed to provide it, she went to a Sunshine Center. What they gave her was a pair of torn jeans and a tank top,” the teacher recounted.
What the HISD bond will entail: a recap
According to HISD, the $4.4 billion total bond size, one of the largest requested by a school district in Texas, will not involve a tax increase.
The bond will aim to prioritize three categories and allot $1.1 billion to “safety and healthy campuses” and preparing students to be “future ready,” while $2.2 billion will be dedicated to “restoring Houston’s schools.”
Within these buckets, technology, safety, and security upgrades, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) and air quality improvement, lead abatement, safety and health, police equipment, career and technical education (CTE) facilities, pre-K spaces, and school facility construction will be prioritized, while transportation like buses, nutrition, business logistics and purchasing, athletics and performing arts facilities, and print shops will not.
“I can tell you now that the bond’s not going to get passed. Schools need to be updated, these kids are underprivileged, they’re not able to learn. A lot of them don’t have Wi-Fi at home,” said Derrick Durham. “Like with the new education system, you might as well take that down because it’s false advertisement.”
HISD also considered including 35 more schools in its plan to co-locate 15 campuses as part of the bond. This essentially means moving students from eight schools to seven other campuses owing to declining student enrollment and budget constraints. Miles explained during a board meeting that the $2.27 billion he aims to use for 43 school actions will be directed toward rebuilding and renovating campuses. Out of this budget, $580 million will be allocated to seven campuses for incoming co-located students.
“How do you prioritize? Again, we only have 2.2 billion. It’s a more narrow set of choices than we would like to have in an ordinary bond,” said Miles.
According to HISD’s data, only 12% of students are completing CTE courses, 14% are graduating from college, and the dropout rate is 36%. HISD argues that TEA requirements are becoming more rigorous over time, and students are not receiving adequate instruction.
To solve this problem, HISD aims to build centers “aligned to jobs of the future” within “limited” travel distance, which will prepare students for “high-skill, high-wage, high-demand jobs in Houston.” The programs will comprise architecture, construction, energy, health sciences, manufacturing, agriculture, food and natural resources, information technology, transportation, and distribution and logistics.
The school board, on the other hand, can authorize the election order, the sale of bond tranches the use of funds, and the amount of funds to be used for the bond.
A Bond Oversight Committee will monitor the progress of the bond construction and communicate with Houston residents.
