Could former Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles be heading to Houston? It depends on who you ask. The Texas Education Agency denies that a decision has been made to name a new Houston ISD superintendent. But according to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Miles has been chosen to lead the nation’s seventh largest district.
“The commissioner should confirm or deny. This process is totally flawed,” Turner said. “One person in Austin is deciding who will be the superintendent and managers.”
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, also agreed with Turner on hearing the speculations about Miles being chosen as the new superintendent.
“So it’s important for the TEA Administrator to do what is right — that is to leave HISD in the structure that it is in which allows our superintendent, teachers, and parents to invest in the betterment of our school district and allow parents to be viable stake holders in the education of their children,” Lee said in a Twitter thread. “This should be about the people of HISD, not politics. I know that we all can see this is a takeover of a functioning public school system.”
A TEA spokesperson told the Defender that the official name of the superintendent and board of managers will be announced on June 1.
Miles was the former superintendent of the Harrison School District in Colorado. He held that position for six years before serving as Dallas ISD’s superintendent beginning in 2012.
Miles resigned from that role in 2015 to spend time with his family.
Before his departure, Miles survived a no-confidence vote from the Dallas School Board who voted 6-3 in a motion to fire Miles, according to reports from KERA.
He is now the founder and CEO of Third Future Schools, a network of public charter schools serving 4,500 students in Texas, Colorado, and Louisiana.
Dallas ISD and Miles had been at the center of controversy during his tenure, as parents alleged officials within the school district took money away from “at risk” students to pay for magnet and elite schools.
Miles is also credited with introducing the Accelerating Campus Excellence turnaround program to help struggling Dallas schools, an initiative critics say has proven to be costly.
Some Dallas school trustees have had concerns about Miles’ management style and performance; a reputation that concerns many Houston education advocates.
The Houston Teachers Union among others shared their thoughts about the lack of transparency on Twitter, calling it a “hypocrisy” that with a little over two weeks until the start of the takeover there is still no word on who the HISD superintendent will be, yet, teachers are expected to give resignation notice no later than 45 days before the first day of instruction for the school year.
“The people’s focus on Miles is a misplaced. The real problem here is the governor and the way in which this takeover is happening, no transparency,” said Ruth Kravetz, co-founder of Community Voices for Public Education. “This is just an attempt of the governor and Republicans to take over our democratic institutions in cities with large Black and Brown communities. We are two weeks away from Miles being appointed and they are pretending that he’s not.”
