A former teacher of Houston ISD, who spoke with the Defender on the condition of anonymity, was asked to write the African American curriculum at an NES school for the 2023-24 school year. A week before classes were to begin, she emailed the school district, inquiring about her location. Soon after, she received an automated message that asked her to look for another location.
She accepted a job at Worthing High School, an institution with a 99.2% minority enrollment, comprising 67.7% Black and 29.6% students, and moved to Houston from Angleton for the job. At first, she taught Art of Thinking, but when the U.S. history teacher left, she had to fill the role, teaching both subjects for $68,000 a year. In December 2023, she left the district and decided to teach at Brazosport and Alvin community colleges and finally joined Fort Bend ISD.
“The issue for me was the fact that I gave up other positions because I was constantly told [by HISD] ‘don’t look somewhere else. We really want you for this position,’ only then to be told we’re not doing African American studies through an automated message,” she told the Defender.
She is one of the 10,000 employees who left HISD since the Texas Education Agency (TEA) took over the district last year, joining 75% of the departures that were “voluntary.” Moreover, 2,400 teachers and 76 principals left in June, leaving a void that HISD is yet to fill.
Once she joined, the atmosphere of the school bothered her — she saw the principal “yelling at grown people,” including students. “For me, that was just, it was just too much unnecessary stress.”
Moreover, her class had students who were preparing for the STAAR test, while others had failed and were placed in the class again.
According to HISD, it sent out 6,500 teacher contracts toward the end of the last school year, while 250 to 300 teachers were told their contracts will continue without a renewal. The school district may also employ fewer teachers, owing to declining enrollment.
The enrollment now stands at 183,884 – down by 6,000 students from the 2022-23 school year and approximately 26,000 from the 210,000 enrolled in 2019 during pre-pandemic times, according to data obtained by the Houston Defender.
A former teacher and current parent of HISD, Melissa Yarborough, who resigned from her role at Navarro Middle School (non-NES) in January 2024, says the district leadership is one of the primary reasons behind her decision to quit. She also attributes it to pressure from administrators to use the district’s curriculum. Her children still attend Pugh Elementary at HISD, which recently became a part of the NES program and has experienced high teacher turnover and an increase in the hiring of non-certified educators.
“It has proven last year to be chaotic and uncaring about the students, families, teachers, and administrators. I expect it to be just as chaotic as last year, if not more,” Yarborough told the Defender. “I expect them to be harsher on teachers and students and less responsive to parents. I expect a lot more of ignoring parents’ concerns, teachers’ concerns, firing teachers who bring up concerns, just on a larger scale.”
At Yarborough’s school, she observed “parents’ and students’ rights and Individualized Education Program (IEP)’s accommodations for special education being violated.”
“They expected me to ignore students’ individual needs, to treat them as though they were in some kind of military environment as emotionless gettings who were just there to cram knowledge into. They expected me to give them a 10-minute time test, ignore any special education accommodations, and use a one-size-fits-all curriculum,” she said. “The curriculum violated everything that I learned in all of my education courses. I have a master’s in education and curriculum and instruction. I’m certified in multiple subjects. I’ve been trained in what works in education, and they were telling me to ignore everything that works that’s research-based, and basically practice tests for STAAR.”
She also feels skeptical about the way the HISD superintendent Mike Miles handled his chain of charter schools in Texas, Colorado, Louisiana, and Tennessee, alleging funneling about 40% of taxpayers’ money for “unspecified administrative costs and services” and spending taxpayer money on “unwanted resources” like spin bikes on elementary school campuses. She says what Miles considers to be a “hospital model” is the same as telling doctors to ignore their education and do things “his way.”
“It’s miles taking his charter school program and clicking copy-paste, and he’s pasted his charter school program onto a whole district,” she explained. “Parents don’t have a say in what happens because they’re not accountable to the parents. They’re accountable to their shareholders.”
Yarborough’s children, who were at an NES school last year, experienced a dearth of programs, including free after-school robotics programming and garden activities, and witnessed teachers being fired or being asked to reapply for their jobs. “We lost almost 70%, only 30% of teachers returned, and no admin returned at this particular school,” she said. “We lost so many programs because we lost all of that community knowledge. Although we parents collected as much information and contact info and details as we could pass on to the current admin, the current admin chose not to continue any of it.”
Starting this fall, her children will no longer attend an NES school. However, parents voice their concerns over pulling their wards out of NES schools and its eventual culmination into declining enrollment while battling the dilemma of doing what is best for them.
“I don’t think that the problems that Miles is causing a school in schools are limited to NES. It is much farther reaching than that,” Yarborough said. “I am just hoping he doesn’t last too long here and that this non-NES school will be better for my kids. It’s a cautious optimism.”
