Houston ISD parents and students chastised Superintendent Mike Miles during a Thursday board meeting for championing “data over anecdotes” as justification for his sweeping reforms.
The critics said cherry-picked statistics don’t outweigh their lived experience. Miles has said that data-driven initiatives such as standardized test scores are the only reliable way to measure student improvement, and it’s working: HISD recently announced it has zero F-rated campuses and doubled the number of A- and B-rated schools.
In a mid-September Houston City Council meeting, the state-appointed superintendent doubled down when Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum said she’d heard from residents who don’t believe Miles’ data. Some have accused HISD of manipulating the numbers by pulling strong students from college-prep courses to artificially inflate test scores.
“We’ve been at this for two years,” Miles said at the time. “You can have all the conspiracy theories you want. The fact is the fact and the data comes from TEA, and the people who do believe it are the parents and the kids who are succeeding.”
When a crowd at the council meeting jeered at Miles, the superintendent dismissed the audience as “unprofessional” and said they represented a small number of HISD stakeholders.
Current goals are focused on achievement measured by the STAAR test and College, Career and Military Readiness test and tied to the Measures of Academic Progress assessment given three times a year, said Alison LiVecchi, a strategic innovation leader with HISD.
LiVecchi proposed updating metrics to revise targets and reflect changes within the MAP program and using the current academic year as a “baseline year,” noting that the progress measures would be re-evaluated again in August 2026.
Many parents and students took issue with the changes, with one saying she wasn’t opposed to change; she was opposed to chaos.
Some held signs that said, “Fire the Liar.” When a child referred to Miles as an “evil character,” the crowd applauded and one audience member shouted, “You go, girl!” A woman who tried to translate for one of the speakers was asked to leave because she used profanity after being told the interpreter had to be an HISD employee.
An attendee at the Houston ISD board meeting on Thursday held up a sign that read, “Fire the Liar.” Credit: April Towery
Sixth-grader Edita-Sage Bitner said she didn’t think MAP scores should be used to measure progress.
“We can’t look back to see what we missed or how to improve,” she said. “It just gives us a number. Learning is so much more than that. I may do well on tests but the skills that matter most — creativity, teamwork, problem-solving and communication aren’t measured by MAP or STAAR. Real learning happens through teacher feedback, reflection and meaningful projects, not computer tests.”
Several parents said they felt dismissed by Miles’ public statements that data matters more than anecdotes.
Trey Comstock said an anecdote is the story of one person, but “when hundreds and thousands of people across socioeconomic status and ethnicity tell very similar stories, that is a significant trend in the qualitative data that something powerful, generalizable and, in this case, negative, is happening in our city.”
Other parents complained about families and teachers leaving the district due to “endless worksheets” and unconventional learning methods.
During Thursday’s meeting, Miles highlighted the results of a report in which 9,300 principals and teachers were surveyed anonymously.
“Principals are overwhelmingly in support of the things that we’re doing,” he said. “They understand what we’re doing and the path we’re headed on and principals very favorably think that their work is connected to the district’s plan. They think they’re adding value, and they are.”
The same parents who chastised Miles at the beginning of the meeting scoffed as he reviewed data showing approval ratings well above 90 percent. “It’s not credible,” one woman shouted.
Almost 100 percent of leaders believe that working at HISD has grown their instructional leadership, Miles said.
“Overall, you can see our leaders are well bought-in, they’re well supported and they’re doing the work,” Miles said.
HISD Superintendent Mike Miles said teacher perception about the district is improving. Credit: Houston ISD
When the numbers skewed low, such as 44 percent of teachers saying the district was headed in the right direction, Miles said the response was improving and higher than the national average.
“Teaching is a tough job and it’s probably never going to get easier in this day and age when there’s so much that has to be done to help our kids,” he said.
Durham Elementary School parent Jill Tucker suggested an independent survey of teachers, parents and students.
Durham Elementary School parent Jill Tucker spoke out against HISD’s temporary goal progress measures. Credit: April Towery
“Over the past several months, you’ve heard our story,” she said. “You’ve heard about the chaos that began before the first day of school, the high-performing teachers who were reassigned and the students left behind to substitutes and screens. Teachers have been pushed out of jobs they loved; families left schools they helped build and sustain; children lost stability and connection.”
“Your leadership has created a culture driven by fear and compliance,” Tucker added. “Our stories aren’t isolated incidents but they are districtwide trends, and we are living proof of what your policies have done to our schools.”
Demetrius Lott has wanted to be a football coach since he was a child. He has a four-year degree in physical education but he’s missing a certificate that would allow him to call plays on the sidelines rather than clean bathrooms at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s Ken Pridgeon Stadium under the Friday night lights.
He’s been working as the head custodian at Bleyl Middle School in the Cy-Fair school district for almost 20 years. Last summer, his local American Federation of Teachers union president Nikki Cowart gave Lott a nudge.
“She was such a blessing to me,” Lott said. “She didn’t know I had a degree. She said they had a program that could help me get certified. I was just like, sign me up.”
CFISD is one of just a few districts in Texas that partners with iTeach for a low-cost certification program exclusively for union members. The hope is that once prospective teachers finish their certification, they’ll be hired at Cy-Fair, the union president said.
“I have so many paraprofessionals who would love to become certified teachers and have already dedicated years of service to Cy-Fair,” Cowart said. “They just can’t flippin’ afford it.”
Lott, 47, says he hopes his story will inspire others to take the licensing classes while maintaining non-classroom jobs. He says he daydreams about coaching while he’s working at Bleyl Middle School, mopping floors and emptying trash.
He started his certification program in June and hopes to have his teaching certificate by spring break. He’s already referred to as “Coach” by his fellow union members but is following a rigorous schedule to “do things right” and actually earn the title, he said.
He goes in early every weekday to the middle school for observation hours, works from 3 to 11:30 p.m., and does his online certification coursework in the middle of the night and on weekends. He’s required to attend an in-person, seven-hour certification class one Saturday a month.
But Lott is an exception. Thousands of teachers across Texas are working toward their certification while already teaching in a classroom, something that many parents and students call outrageous. Unlicensed teachers are expected to provide an education when they haven’t yet been certified in the subject matter and aren’t familiar with best practices and classroom protocols.
And if they don’t finish their certification in a two-year time frame, they’ll be fired, creating another empty classroom and leaving the would-be teacher looking for a new career.
More than half of Texas’ new-to-profession teachers are uncertified, and as public education enrollment drops and more teachers resign or are terminated, the likelihood that the people educating local youth aren’t certified has spiked.
For their part, many seeking to become teachers recall fond memories of an educator who believed in them when they were a child. They want to give back and make the world a better place, they say. But public education has changed, seasoned teachers tell the Houston Press.
Last year, Houston ISD reported 2,097 uncertified teachers; the number has since grown to about 2,500, or one in four, according to district data. HISD Superintendent Mike Miles, who is himself uncertified, said at a board meeting last week that 1,700 teachers were uncertified last year.
However, there have been various reports that indicate the number is much higher. Miles said the district experienced some of the highest growth in its history last year, “because the principals and executive directors of instruction help teachers grow quickly.”
The latest available numbers reflect that there were 861 uncertified teachers at Aldine ISD, 202 at Cy-Fair ISD, 111 at Spring Branch ISD, and 73 at Fort Bend ISD during the 2023-24 school year.
Statewide, about 42,103, or 12 percent, of public school teachers are uncertified, according to the Texas Education Agency. The number has steadily climbed since the 2019-2020 school year, when there were 12,908 uncertified teachers statewide.
The number of uncertified teachers has spiked steadily since 2019. Credit: Texas Education Agency
Cameron Campbell served as a head coach and athletic director for the KIPP Houston charter school and now works as an entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Katy ISD, where Campbell’s kids are enrolled, reported no uncertified teachers last school year.
Campbell said he supports having professionals get some classroom experience while they’re working toward certification — particularly those who have already had a career in a trade. A retired engineer teaching Algebra I, a hairstylist teaching cosmetology, or a mechanic teaching shop class could offer a fresh perspective, Campbell said.
“My point of view is probably different from [that of] a lot of progressive political folks,” he said. “I think it’s actually a really healthy thing. I know a ton of retired professional athletes, and most times, the first thing they want to do is go coach at their kids’ school or find a school that needs help and contribute and give back.”
“They’re qualified but not certified,” he added. “You should see the looks on their faces when you tell someone who played in the NFL for 10 years and won a Super Bowl that they can’t coach a seventh-grade C team football team.”
This theory doesn’t appeal to everyone. The advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas found that students with new uncertified teachers lose about four months of learning in reading and three months in math unless the teacher has previous experience working in a public school. Forty-three percent of first-time, uncertified hires in Texas teach elementary and early education students, according to Raise Your Hand.
More than half of new-to-profession teachers are uncertified. Credit: Texas Education Agency
There’s a lot of talk among seasoned educators about pedagogy — the method and practice of teaching — which comes from classroom experience, said Ruth Kravetz, cofounder of Houston-based Community Voices for Public Education.
Kravetz says teaching is a craft and a skill. “If a lady was cutting hair the year before — not that cutting hair is a bad thing — but it’s completely unconnected to teaching,” that’s cause for concern, she said.
Kravetz added that charter schools disproportionately hire uncertified teachers, which is important to note when comparing Houston ISD data to the statewide numbers — but she’s quick to point out that the uncertified teacher “epidemic” is not a manufactured crisis.
“This is a crisis,” she said. “You’ve got an epidemic of teachers fleeing the field. Why are people leaving in high numbers? Partially COVID, partially pay, and partially because test scores have so narrowed the curriculum and the concept of what constitutes quality instruction. The highest turnover is in the highest-need communities.”
And those longtime teachers are being replaced by uncertified and young, inexperienced teachers, she added.
“Just because you’ve been teaching for 10 years doesn’t mean you’re good but if you are a first-year anything, it means you’re not as good as you can be, and in some cases, you’re really, really bad,” Kravetz said. “It does matter if a high percentage of teachers are uncertified. Some people are extraordinary without credentialing and training. There are naturals.”
“But most people, you have to practice at things to get good at them. Shell [Chemicals] would not survive if one in four of their soap and detergent chemists making the laundry detergent were fresh out of college. There are just things people learn on the ground.”
Texas Tech University professor Jacob Kirksey studied the Lone Star State’s uncertified teacher crisis for a policy brief published last year and updated in April.
“There’s a staggering rise in the employment of uncertified teachers, driven by acute staffing shortages and the flexibility offered by the state’s District of Innovation plans,” Kirksey said in the study. “This reliance on uncertified educators is raising alarms among educators and policymakers alike. Concerns are mounting over whether these teachers, often entering the classroom having never worked in public schools, are equipped to meet the demands of today’s classrooms.”
When Cy-Fair ISD became a District of Innovation in 2024, “it opened up some gray area around non-certified,” allowing the district to pull certified teachers to lead classrooms that cover topics they’re not certified in, Cowart said.
Kirksey’s research shows that uncertified teachers who have already been in a classroom tend to complete low-quality online programs, which have been linked to poor student outcomes. Additionally, students with uncertified new teachers are significantly underdiagnosed for dyslexia and are more absent from school, according to Kirksey’s research.
That’s why Cy-Fair is touting its partnership with iTeach, which helps cover certification costs and puts prospective teachers through a rigorous program that includes instruction techniques before they lead a classroom.
“If you aren’t, at the bare minimum, going through an alternative certification program, I just feel like you’re not getting that pedagogy of classroom management,” Cowart said.
HISD has gotten desperate to fill classrooms since a 2023 state takeover ushered in Superintendent Miles, appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, and a handpicked board of managers — and ushered out more than 7,000 district employees over a two-year period.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath appointed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles in 2023 as part of a state takeover. Credit: Margaret Downing
Teachers have cited low pay, a lack of support, and a punitive environment as their reasons for leaving. Many have lamented the rigid, formulaic teaching models Miles initiated, such as using AI-generated PowerPoint presentations.
Miles said at an October 9 board meeting that the district is in an “age of teacher shortages and lack of certification” for the foreseeable future.
“Just like any other district in Texas and the United States, every large district, we’ll see the need to hire teachers without certification or who have to be working toward certification,” he said. “The reason we’ve been successful even with the number of teachers without certification is that our model is designed to grow teachers quickly. Teachers who have never been in the classroom have to grow quickly in order for their kids to do well.”
Last week, Houston Endowment announced a $450,000 grant to the education nonprofit TNTP to support four Houston-area school districts — Fort Bend, Houston, Humble, and Pasadena ISDs — in implementing plans to increase their number of certified teachers.
“The grant comes at a pivotal moment for Texas schools as more than half of teachers hired statewide in the 2023–24 school year were unlicensed,” Houston Endowment officials said in a press release. “Under House Bill 2, signed into law in June 2025, school districts must reduce their reliance on uncertified teachers in core subjects to no more than 20 percent by the 2026–27 school year, with the cap dropping incrementally to just 5 percent by the 2029-30 school year.”
Where Have All the Teachers Gone?
Houston ISD announced recently that nearly 450 employees were cut or reassigned last month amid enrollment declines. A district spokesperson said at the time that performance and certification were prioritized when the cuts were made, and 160 uncertified teachers lost their jobs.
More than 230 teachers were reassigned to adjust to lower enrollment. At least 28 of those fired were union members working as teacher apprentices, and the Houston Federation of Teachers has said it plans to appeal. The union has also sued the school district for pay bonuses and is planning to go to trial on October 22.
HFT Chief of Staff Corina Ortiz said prospective HISD teachers are “burning the midnight oil,” taking online classes while working full-time jobs and paying thousands out of pocket to get their certification, only to be fired before they can complete it.
“It’s truly distressing to people who just want to come in and help kids. They want to teach kids,” Ortiz said. “It’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of energy and it’s difficult to finish that program. It’s even more difficult now because what we’re finding with this group of young teachers that are uncertified, they have no mentoring. In Mike Miles’ world, it seems like teachers are dispensable and certifications aren’t necessary.”
The union has won a few appeals to have teachers reinstated but the most common outcome is a settlement agreement, Ortiz said. HFT has filed 309 grievances against HISD in the past year.
“Here’s the travesty of it all,” Ortiz said. “These folks come into the profession wanting to be teachers. Because of the experience they’ve had and how negative it’s been, the majority of them decide they don’t want to be anywhere near teaching. My fear is we’re going to lose several generations of kids if education remains in the hands of people who are driven not only by money but by political agendas.”
Cowart, the Cy-Fair union official, said she understands the concern about uncertified teachers. She said she was baffled when she heard at a conference that some districts are hiring “PTO mommies” to teach because they need a body in the front of the room.
The Houston Press spoke to several former Houston ISD teachers who either recently resigned or were fired. They all said it was difficult to work under the Mike Miles administration, and it wasn’t what they’d signed up for when they got into education.
One woman taught French for 14 years in Spring Branch ISD and signed a contract with the Houston school district last year. She was gone by May, claiming she was constantly written up for minor infractions such as leaving the classroom to use the bathroom.
She has untreated anxiety and panic attacks. She no longer has health insurance and she’s looking for employment at small businesses in her Montrose neighborhood.
“I’ll never teach again,” she said.
Librarian Brandie Dowda was fired from Houston ISD two years ago and took a higher-paying job at Katy ISD. HISD has downsized to fewer than 30 librarians throughout the district because “Mike Miles doesn’t believe in libraries,” Dowda said.
“We were kind of the unwanted stepchild,” she said. “It’s highly ironic that the solution to literacy issues is to get rid of libraries and librarians. Make it make sense.”
The district has implied that the teachers who are leaving were not doing a good job, but Dowda says the teachers who are leaving are actually experienced, certified educators who don’t want to teach off AI-generated PowerPoints.
“There are tons of uncertified teachers,” she said. The draw is the potential to make an $80,000 salary, “but they don’t read the fine print,” which Dowda says outlines performance measures that are constantly changing.
“They get fired if they aren’t certified within two years but most of them don’t make it that long,” she said. “Teaching is a really difficult job, even if that’s what you love to do.”
“Honestly, at this point, if the TEA stepped away and we got rid of Mike Miles, and we had an elected board and hired a superintendent with a background in education, it would take at least a decade to repair the damage,” she added. “It’s that bad. They’re scrambling to empty water out of a sinking ship that they poked the holes in.”
According to the Texas Association of School Boards, districts have to notify parents when an unlicensed teacher is overseeing their child’s classroom. HISD parent Kathleen Zinn recently shared an email she wrote to administrators at Lanier Middle School to advise them that her daughter was without an algebra teacher for almost a month.
“Three weeks is ABSURD!” Zinn wrote in the email, for which she didn’t receive an immediate response. “Plus, it does not address or excuse the piss poor job done by [a department director] — telling children to teach themselves. And shaming them for being confused and asking questions. The kids were told that if unable to figure out the work, they (meaning the students) are not Lanier Leaders because they don’t embody the problem-solver IB characteristic. Absolutely shaming and disrespecting these kids. Unacceptable.”
Houston ISD administrators presented data at an October 9 board meeting. Credit: Houston ISD
Another former HISD teacher said she was laid off due to low enrollment at her school but found out days later her position was filled by someone else.
Danielle Cockrell, a certified high school algebra teacher at Cypress Lakes, changed careers after she was laid off from Lucent Technologies in 2002.
“My unemployment ran out and my sister-in-law suggested I start subbing,” she said. Cockrell slid into a paraprofessional role when the position opened up and found herself frequently alone at the front of a classroom because the assigned teacher was often absent. School officials told her that if she was going to do the job, she ought to get the certification.
She got the license and is now vice president of the Cy-Fair AFT union. She says it’s a hard time to be a teacher. The major issues facing teachers in her district are “pay and being respected,” she said. Public education has changed, she added.
“Now we have students who are coming to school, I’m just going to be honest, to sell dope, or because it’s a place where they can have food, or for social aspects,” Cockrell said. “The last thing they’re coming to school for is academics. If you come into education thinking that everything is going to be like it was when you were in school, no. If they’re not flexible enough to understand and work with students who are not like them, they’re going to leave.”
Students want to talk about immigration raids, Trump policies, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, but Cockrell says she directs them back to math. She has some youth in her classes who come to school hungry and thirsty. She buys cases of water at Costco so she can share with students. Before a statewide cell phone ban went into effect this year, Cockrell traded her students a bottle of water if they’d leave their phones on her desk for the duration of the class.
“There are days I would love to go back into corporate, but when you see a student who thought they couldn’t learn, or they finally get the concept, or you see a future in a child, it makes those hard days worth it,” Cockrell said.
She ran into a Cy-Fair graduate while she was out doing Christmas shopping a few years ago. He was enrolled in college and introduced Cockrell to his fiancée.
“I was ready to quit that day. I would rather flip burgers than go back to the classroom,” Cockrell said. But the student told her he’d always remembered that she taught him that when he’s faced with something difficult, he should ask himself, “Is it hard work or is it just a lot of work?”
“I had to let him know that day, because of what he said to me, I went back to work,” she said.
Certification Process
On a recent Friday afternoon at Bleyl Middle School, teachers and Principal Michelle Provo shared how proud they were of their head custodian Lott for working toward his teacher certification.
Provo said Lott doesn’t have much interaction with students because he starts his shift at 3 p.m., but she can tell he’s a natural leader. His eight crew members look up to him and “you can tell they want to make him proud,” Provo said.
“He was out for a couple of days and when he came back he brought us all barbecue,” she said. “He’s gentle but he’s in charge. And don’t get me started on him walking me to my car. If I stay late, he will not let me leave unless he walks me to my car.”
Bleyl Middle School Principal Michelle Provo says she couldn’t be more proud of Demetrius Lott for working toward his teaching certificate. Credit: April Towery
Lott says he just wants to make a difference for young people like his coaches did for him. He played football at Eisenhower High School in Aldine ISD and was a nose guard for the Butte College Roadrunners in the late 1990s. After playing ball at Butte, Lott got his bachelor’s degree in physical education at the University of Marion in North Dakota.
“I played sports all my life and I love being around sports,” Lott said. “I always had the passion to coach. I felt like this [opportunity to get certified] was God telling me, if this is your calling, then I’m going to put you in the right position with the right people to make this happen for you.”
Why don’t more people just do what Lott did and get the certification?
Because the certification process is difficult, it’s expensive, and then the teacher still has to find a job and navigate a career change in an unprecedented public education climate, Lott said.
“I understand the pedagogy part, but it’s a lot of stress and a lot of people are not good test-takers,” Lott said. “I have a couple of friends who went through the program and they just bombed the test like three or four times. They’re terrified to take it again. That forces them to move on to another career. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Uncertified teacher data from the 2024-25 school year. Credit: Screenshot
Lott, who has one child who graduated from Prairie View A&M University and another currently enrolled, said he wants to prepare youth for college.
“My parents never went to college, so it was hard for me to know what the do’s and don’ts were,” he said.
He spent about $2,500 out of pocket for his certification and the iTeach program covered about $2,000.
Cockrell, the Cy-Fair math teacher, did a one-year in-person certification program with Texas Teachers and was employed in a classroom while she was completing her coursework. She spent about $6,000 out of pocket, she said. Some programs don’t take payment until the certified teacher has a job, and the teacher has one year to pay it off, Cockrell said.
“For me, I needed a job and I needed to make more money,” she said. “I had two bachelor’s degrees in business and at that time I just could not get a job anywhere else.”
When Cockrell completed her certification — almost 20 years ago — she was told that those who go through an alternative teaching program last about three years on the job before quitting. Today, about 45 percent of unlicensed teachers in rural communities stay in teaching beyond three years, according to Raise Your Hand Texas.
New people are hired on as teachers whenever the oil and gas business slumps, Cockrell said, but they don’t stick around. Sometimes that’s because they didn’t get the proper training and weren’t prepared for what to expect, she added.
“If you’re in a certification program where you’re learning to work with children of all levels, you’re getting some education, but if you’re a teacher who does not have that support, that is a disservice not only to the children but to the teacher,” Cockrell said. “You might as well just be a long-term sub.”
Lott says his classmates in the iTeach program are secretaries, paraprofessionals, and groundskeepers who are trying to better their lives and need some encouragement and support. The Cy-Fair custodian said he was worried about taking classes since he’s been out of college for 20 years.
“It’s not even about not being able to afford it. It was about the push that Nikki gave me,” Lott said of the union president encouraging him to go for it. “She calls me Coach right now. She more or less inspired me to go ahead and put my best foot forward.”
“I am going to be so overwhelmed, so overjoyed when I finish everything,” he added. “I know where I came from. I told my friends, I might shed a tear.”
Bleyl Middle School head custodian Demetrius Lott is getting his teaching certificate so he can coach high school football. Credit: April Towery
Regardless of who is elected to the Houston ISD board of trustees in November, they won’t have any power — but both major political parties are endorsing candidates in the nonpartisan race, with the Harris County Democratic Party doing so for the first time ever.
Due to a 2023 state takeover, HISD’s governing authority is a board of managers appointed by the Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath. The elected panel doesn’t have a vote and can’t sit in on executive sessions.
Nonetheless, officials with Harris County’s GOP and Democratic Party are making sure voters know which candidates espouse their party’s values when they go to the polls on November 4. The endorsements carry some weight but don’t guarantee victory, according to a Republican Party precinct chair, but the bigger picture is that it appears the religious right and the progressive left are attempting to take over all levels of government, starting at the most local races, where they say it matters most.
The Harris County Democratic Party’s picks for HISD include Felicity Pereyra (District 1), Maria Benzon (District 5), Michael McDonough (District 6), Dr. Audrey Nath (District 7), and Myrna Guidry (District 9).
The candidates “share a commitment to strong public schools, equity in education, and the democratic values that empower Houston families,” said Democratic Party Chair Mike Doyle.
“At this point, unfortunately, the Trumpsters have turned school districts into an ideological playground and parents, teachers, and families are in a position where, unless they have the most qualified folks identified, they’re not necessarily going to know who [to vote for], so we felt an important need to speak out,” he said.
Doyle acknowledged that HISD’s “puppet” board of managers has the authority, but said the elected trustees have oversight responsibility.
“At this point, because of folks basically trying to kill public schools in favor of vouchers, with the takeover, they don’t have the authority to do what they need to do to protect,” he said. “They’re basically just oversight, calling out the worst abuses, so they’re important positions for that.”
“I think local races are important to every family in Harris County and they have become the place where the worst of the worst in many ways have started to get involved in destroying education,” he added. “It’s reached the point where we’ve got to make sure that folks understand who the ones are who are not the crackpots.”
The Democratic values espoused by the endorsed slate, according to Doyle, include fully funding and supporting public education, properly paying teachers, and “not just trying to destroy the system in favor of billionaires pushing vouchers for profit.”
“I think endorsements matter in a school district that is predominantly Democrat-voting,” he said. “I think it matters because it gives voters a really strong guidepost for who the most effective, willing-to-fight-the-takeover candidates are.”
The Harris County Republican Party endorsed two Houston ISD candidates, Bridget Wade for District 7 and Robbie McDonough for District 5. Harris County GOP Party Chair Cindy Siegel said the party began endorsing school board candidates in 2021 and takes credit for flipping three school boards to a Republican majority.
“I thought having conservative representation on school boards and city councils — local government — was important because that impacts your life more than what goes on in Austin or D.C.,” said Siegel, a former mayor of Bellaire. “Our process has been fine-tuned and sometimes we’ve done a really great job and other times we’ve learned from it. We continue to try to refine the process.”
Siegel said the process is fair and transparent, and candidates are fully vetted through interviews and a series of public forums. If precinct chairs don’t like the bylaws, they’re welcome to submit a resolution to change them, she said.
“We have, more often than not, gotten it right,” she said. “Our job, as party officers, is to try to get Republicans elected, to make your case, whether you’re knocking on doors or talking to friends. Instead of making their case and participating, my frustration was that I felt like some of [the precinct chairs] were like, it’s not going the way I want it to, so I’m going to take my toys and go down the road.”
A federal judge ruled last week that 11 Texas school districts, including Cypress-Fairbanks, Fort Bend, and Houston ISDs, don’t have to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom as required by a state law passed earlier this year. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said only nine districts are covered by the temporary injunction, and those that aren’t, including Houston ISD, must hang the posters when the law takes effect on September 1.
It’s not clear why the federal judge’s order named 11 districts — which were sued by a group of parents and civil rights advocates in Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District .— and Paxton’s press release mentions nine, exempting Austin ISD and Houston ISD from relief. Paxton’s press office did not respond to calls or emails on Monday.
Repeated phone calls and emails to Houston ISD went unanswered for most of the day. A spokesman responded in the afternoon, saying by email, “The District will not be discussing matters with pending litigation.”
In his latest public statement about the case, Paxton said: “From the beginning, the Ten Commandments have been irrevocably intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage. Schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide by SB 10 and display the Ten Commandments. The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation’s history will be defeated. I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country.”
Paxton is currently challenging longtime U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary and will soon be vacating his seat as attorney general. Cornyn seized the opportunity Monday to make a social media dig at Paxton, who has been accused of adultery and whose wife, Texas Sen. Angela Paxton, recently filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.”
The school districts affected by the injunction according to Paxton are Alamo Heights, North East, Cypress-Fairbanks, Lackland, Lake Travis, Fort Bend, Dripping Springs, Plano, and Northside, Paxton said in his statement. “All other ISDs must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025,” he said.
In a 55-page ruling issued August 20, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said the Texas law was unconstitutional and crossed the line from exposure to coercion.
“[Most people] just want to be left alone, neither proselytized nor ostracized, including what occurs to their children in government-run schools,” Judge Biery wrote in his ruling. “Even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer. That is what they do.”
Paxton said he immediately appealed the “flawed ruling.” Biery isn’t the only judge who took issue with the Ten Commandments display. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it “plainly unconstitutional” just days before Senate Bill 10, authored by Republican Sen. Phil King of Weatherford, was signed into law.
The Texas law requires that the scripture be displayed on a donated 16-by-20 poster. “While no school is compelled to purchase Ten Commandments displays, schools may choose to do so,” Paxton said in his statement. “However, schools must accept and display any privately donated posters or copies that meet the requirements of SB 10.”
Kristi Gross, press strategist with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the attorney general’s demand that school districts implement Senate Bill 10 is “unwise and unlawful.”
“A federal court has ruled that SB 10 is plainly unconstitutional, and school districts have an independent legal obligation to respect the constitutional rights of children and families,” she said. “Districts that flout the First Amendment will be opening themselves up to litigation.”
Public school teachers in 11 Texas districts, including three in the Greater Houston area, are blocked from displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom despite a state law passed in June, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
In the 55-page ruling, Biery said that children can be cruel to their classmates perceived to be “the other” and that Senate Bill 10, approved by the Texas Legislature earlier this year, crosses the line from exposure to coercion.
“Ultimately, in matters of conscience, faith, beliefs, and the soul, most people are Garbo-esque,” Biery wrote, referring to the 1930s film actress Greta Garbo. “They just want to be left alone, neither proselytized nor ostracized, including what occurs to their children in government-run schools. Even though the Ten Commandments would not be affirmatively taught, the captive audience of students likely would have questions, which teachers would feel compelled to answer. That is what they do.”
“Teenage boys, being the curious hormonally driven creatures they are, might ask: ‘Mrs. Walker, I know about lying and I love my parents, but how do I do adultery?’ Truly an awkward moment for overworked and underpaid educators, who already have to deal with sex education issues,” the judge added in his ruling.
The controversial Senate Bill 10, introduced by Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, was signed into law in late June, after the 5th U.S. The Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it “plainly unconstitutional.” It requires that the scripture be displayed on a donated 16-by-20 poster. It was expected to prompt legal challenges, and plaintiffs in the case say they hope other Texas school districts will be blocked from implementing the law.
SB 10 is scheduled to go into effect on September 1. Biery said the issue of religious coercion in schools could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As a rabbi and public school parent, I welcome this ruling,” said plaintiff Rabbi Mara Nathan in a public statement. “Children’s religious beliefs should be instilled by parents and faith communities, not politicians and public schools.”
The decision affirms that Texas families, not politicians or public school officials, get to decide how and when their children engage with religion, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Supporters of SB 10 have said that the Ten Commandments and Christian teachings are vital to understanding U.S. history.
The plaintiffs — a group of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious families, including clergy, with children in public schools — were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
“It violates the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom and church-state separation,” the plaintiffs said of SB 10 in a statement. “Public schools are not Sunday schools.”
A veteran head boys basketball coach and two assistant principals — all in the Houston ISD — were among five people charged with running a teacher certification cheating ring, it was announced Monday by Harris County DA Kim Ogg’s office and Houston ISD.
What this means is that an unknown number of people certified to teach paid to have someone else take the state certification test and are now in classrooms across the state. This apparently started in May 2020 and was only detected after as former coach who knew about the scheme went to authorities, Ogg said.
Investigators found that applicants were driving across the state to test in Houston and that these applicants — some of whom had failed the test several times before — were suddenly able to pass with “flying colors,” said Mike Levine assistant DA in the public corruption division of the DA’s office. “This was used to certify more than 200 unqualified teachers … in districts across the state,” Ogg said. “Worse yet, the teachers included two sexual predators who once falsely certified, had access through their employment to underage kids on campus and off. Once had been charges with indecency with a child, another with online solicitation.”
The criminal charges announced Monday carry penalties of two years to life in prison, Ogg said. The HISD employees arrested include Vincent Grayson, head boys basketball coach and teacher at Booker T. Washington for 20 years Nicholas Newton, assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School and LaShonda Roberts, assistant principal at HISD’s Yates High School.
Two additional people arrested were employees of testing sites where the certification exams were administered: Tywana Gilford Mason, former director at the Houston Training and Education Center and Nikole Wilhite, proctor at Tactix Consulting Group and Testing. According to Levine, Gifford Mason had been previously prosecuted for bribery in Harris County 20 years ago in an unrelated case.
Each of the five were charged with two counts each of organized criminal activity. “All face first or third degree felony charges,” Ogg said. She called Grayson “the kingpin and organizer of this scheme.”
Ogg said applicants would pay $2,500 for a proxy to take the test for them. They would arrive at the testing site, sign in and leave. Then a hired proxy, said to be Nicholas Newton, would step in and actually take the test. The testing proctor would allegedly allow the switch, Ogg said. According to the charges filed, that would have been Gifford Mason and later Wilhite who were paid to look the other way and facilitate the cheating, according to investigators. According to authorities Roberts recruited business for the enterprise.
“LaShondra Roberts, an assistant principal at Yates High School is charged as a recruiter and referral agent who brought in many individuals who sought the services of the of the impersonator test taker,” Ogg said.
According to Levine, Grayson accumulated more than a million dollars from the scheme. He would pay Gifford Mason 20 percent of the money he received and she took in more than $125,000, Levine said. Newton was paid more than $188,000, according to Levine, from May of 2020 to February of 2024. “Our best estimates are that he took more than 430 certification tests fraudulently.” He said Wilhite was paid $250 in cash each time she let the alleged deception take place.
HTEC was shut down in mid 2023 for other reasons and according to Levine that’s when operations were moved to Wilhite at Tactix.
HISD Chief of Public Affairs and Communications, Alexandra Elizondo in a written statement said: ” HISD was made aware of the investigation into an alleged cheating conspiracy shortly before arrests were made. Any educator who engages in conduct of this nature abdicates their responsibility to our students and to our staff and represents a complete betrayal of the public trust. HISD will cooperate fully with the Texas Education Agency and state and local law enforcement as the investigation progresses. All three of these employees have been arrested and will be receiving notifications relieving them of their duties effective immediately.
“Additionally, if it is determined that any teachers currently working in HISD participated in this scheme or passed their certification exams fraudulently, we will take swift action to terminate their employment with the District.”
Elizondo emphasized that it is the TEA not HISD that maintains controls over the teacher certification process and its testing.
Eighty two degrees. When Houston ISD classrooms hit that mark, that’s when the kids inside are moved to another area of a school, Superintendent Mike Miles said Tuesday. Given the heat outside, that’s the district standard for now, he said.
“We look at 82 degrees to be too hot. Too warm for a kid to concentrate and a teacher to teach well, he said. “We use temperature guns, not just ‘This feels warm.’ We are trying to get schools to a comfortable 73, 74 degrees that’s about what we can do in the summer.,” adding they did not have to close any of the 274 HISD schools Tuesday.
He said there remained about 30 teacher vacancies in the district, explaining that those were for specialized courses such as JROTC and career tech ed positions and special ed certified positions.
A Tuesday visit to HISD’s South Division control center housed in the ample extra space at the Jones Futures Academy showed air conditioning and other facilities problems continued to dominate the call-in reports they were receiving.
The next biggest category? Transportation as the district’s adventure with the software system EduLog continued for a second day. Miles said Tuesday’s tally was much improved from the first when a number of students either didn’t have a route or were given wrong route information.. “Keep in mind, every day, kids enroll and they will enroll for the next three weeks and those kids will not have bus routes and they’ll be asking for bus routes.”
Besides visiting the temporary control center, Miles checked in at Mitchell Elementary and Thomas Middle School primarily to see how each school was adapting to the New Education System of constant testing and extended lessons in reading and math. He was accompanied throughout by South Division Superintendent Imelda De La Guardia. Board of Managers member Paula Mendoza was on two legs of the trip.
Mitchell Elementary clearly benefited from its modern building design making it easy to get with Miles’ program with its open classrooms and a Teams Center easy to access on its first floor. Also because although not an NES school last year, it adopted much of the NES model for 2023-24.
Thomas Middle School, an older school scheduled for $17 million in renovation work if the proposed $4.4 billion November bond election, was last renovated in 1978. wasn’t nearly as spiffy. The proposed up[dates which won’t handle all of the school’s needs will be concentrated on overhauling the school’s HVAC(heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system.
After observing the teaching style in a classroom, Miles would huddle with the school administrators and De La Guardia asking them what they thought was done well and what could use improvement before telling them what he saw. This was done in hushed tones, in the empty hallways away from the classroom in question.
Throughout the tour, Miles emphasized that this is only the second day of school and he saw good enthusiasm and determination from principals and teachers to get with what he has termed wholesale systemic reform.
Thomas Middle has three separate buildings for the grades on campus, with open outdoor areas between them. Asked how a campus like that would be able to adopt the one door entrance model for security reasons, Miles said his administration is proposing that it and other campuses like it will be surrounded by a fence.
In a press conference later in the day, Miles stepped back from his earlier estimate about how many students showed up for school this week. He said he would have accurate numbers later.
All Houston ISD summer school students will return to class starting Monday, although they may not be in their usual class.
HISD spokesman Joseph Sam released this statement on Sunday:
“All HISD summer school students are returning to class tomorrow. Students who normally attend a campus that does not yet have power will attend classes at a different site. Families will be contacted directly by their summer school campus with information about where their student will attend class tomorrow.
Drop-off and pick up locations will remain the same. HISD will transport students between summer school sites when necessary.”
We asked how many schools this involved — last week there were reports that as many as 60 schools were out of service — and will update this story once we receive a reply.
This year was the first expanded summer session for HISD students. Additional weeks were added at the direction of Superintendent Mike Miles. HISD also plans to start regular fall classes sooner than it has in the past after receiving a District of Innovation designation from the state which allows it to set an earlier schedule..
The first day of school for HISD is scheduled for August 12.
ALIEF, Texas (KTRK) — Alief Independent School District Police Chief Dan Turner said he spends more than half his time trying to recruit and hire officers to comply with a new law that requires an armed individual on every campus.
But, as the school year comes to an end, the district still has 25 officer openings.
“It takes a special person to be a police officer. You put your life on the line every day. You never know what you’re walking into or what you’re walking away from and it’s going to take a strong-willed person to make the decision that I want to do that every day,” Turner told 13 Investigates.
It takes a special person to be a police officer. You put your life on the line every day.
Alief Independent School District Police Chief Dan Turner
Alief ISD is competing with districts across the state to hire officers after House Bill 3 went into effect Sept. 1. The law requires “at least one armed security officer is present during regular school hours at each district campus.”
If a school district is unable to employ an armed officer due to funding or staffing issues, the law allows the district to claim a “good cause exemption,” which means developing an alternative safety plan approved by its school board.
Texas law says the alternative plan can include hiring a school marshal, who has 80 hours of training, or arming an employee who has completed school safety training.
“We’d rather take our time to get that officer that fits what Alief is looking for versus just taking a shortcut that may be there for us,” the district’s Superintendent Dr. Anthony Mays said.
13 Investigates found some school districts are relying on security guards, and why Alief ISD says that’s not the route for them, at 10 on ABC13 Houston.
For updates on this story, follow Kevin Ozebek on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Update Tuesday 9:26 a.m. According to Brent Taylor, chief communications officer of the Houston Office of Emergency Management, Houstonians should expect the area on Travis from McKinney to Polk, which was shut down so crews could clean up shattered glass and other debris, to remain closed through Wednesday.
Update 7:32 a.m. Two more HISD schools had to close Tuesday after their air conditioning failed Tuesday night: Marshall Middle School and Hamilton Middle School. Original story:
Debris and downed power lines from last Thursday’s storm continued to clutter the Houston area roadways and prevent power restoration for many residents on Monday afternoon, leaving crews with more work in the coming days.
According to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, those hitting the four-day mark in the dark should expect their lights to turn on by Wednesday. If not, she advised residents to check in with an electrician as the source of the outage could be due to localized damage — not a systemwide problem.
CenterPoint Energy crews reported difficulties when attempting to restore power to the areas harder hit by the storm. These included neighborhoods closer to downtown Houston, such as parts of Bellaire and the Heights, and those further out, such as Spring Branch, Cypress and Baytown. In these locations, power restoration has also been unstable, with lights flickering on and off.
HISD Superintendent Mike Miles held a late afternoon press conference. “Today 214 schools were opened. And we got kids into the schools and fed.”
Problems with several air conditioners across Houston ISD campuses and one reported incident involving a gas odor at Lamar High School forced the district to implement early dismissals at the affected campuses on Monday. In addition to Lamar, Reynolds Elementary School and Heights High School also had daytime dismissals.
“Yes two schools had to close. They were up and running, the night before the air conditioning wasThe air conditioning was up and running but in the morning they started having problems and went down. Heights High School had to close and Reynolds Elementary had to close,” Miles said. “That was in the morning. We had another school that had to close but that was Lamar; we had a gas leak.”
The superintendent said some air conditioners went in and out so some classrooms “were a little warmer than we wanted them to be.
Mike Miles talks air conditioning as the effects of last Thursday’s storm continue to affect HISD classrooms.
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Crews and volunteers worked through the weekend to get their schools back in shape. Miles singled out Pugh Elementary where a large tree fell across a courtyard and into one classroom. He said if you went there Monday you wouldn’t know that had ever happened other than the stump left behind.
“We won’t have all the schools open tomorrow,” he said. His position hasn’t changed from when the freezing winter weather closed schools for a day in January about the importance of keeping schools open in times of power outages.
“We have kids who are at home with no power, no air conditioning and it’s hot so that’s one of the reasons we should not wait to open the schools if we can open the schools. That’s why we’re distributing food at the schools that are closed.”
“We monitor the temperature very carefully in all of our schools. We’re looking at temperatures to stay in the 70s. Every day this month, and every day in August, you’re going to get calls and I’m going to get calls about air conditioning.” He used the opportunity to stress the need to pass the bond issue that the Board of Managers is expected to call for.
He also went back to his mantra, that “We need to be urgent. We need to cultivate a culture of essentialness..”
The only school unlikely to reopen for the rest of the year is Sinclair Elementary which was hard hit by the storm and whose students may have to be transported to other schools , he said. “The footnote to that is if we have a school whose power cannot come on Monday or Tuesday of next week, we’re going to have to do something with those schools.”
These HISD schools are scheduled to be closed Tuesday:
HISD advised that ” If your student’s campus is closed tomorrow, staff will be on hand at the school to distribute light meals to students between 7 and 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Campuses will also provide learning packets for students to complete at home if they are able.”
Spring Branch ISD
Spring Branch ISD announced that the district would be closed on Tuesday. As of Monday afternoon, one-third of the campuses did not have power, and many parents, students and staff remained in the dark at their residences.
Spring Branch officials added that they would send an update to community members about Wednesday’s school day by Tuesday at 4 p.m. The administration noted that final exams would take place once students were back in classrooms.
Test scores that negatively affect Spring Branch students’ grades will not be recorded, a decision made because many students lack access to the internet or the ability to access the materials to prepare for their exams.
City and county officials said Monday that there are eight confirmed deaths as a result of Thursday’s storms, and Hidalgo said there has been an uptick in carbon monoxide poisoning calls and injuries related to recovery efforts.
Houston ISD sent a letter to students’ families and community members, notifying them of the extent of damage to campuses and plans for the upcoming school day on Monday.
The administration reported injuries to two Westside High School students related to Thursday’s severe weather. The incidents occurred while the students’ bus was stuck in the storm on the Hardy Toll Road. The two students are recovering at their homes.
The district indicated they were unaware of any other injuries involving HISD students or staff. HISD teams worked throughout Thursday night to assess and repair the damage to campuses, and crews continue to work on recovery efforts.
As of Friday afternoon, 136 campuses were still without power. According to the administration, this is the district’s biggest issue, and it is working with Houston and Harris County officials to determine if it will be able to continue with its plan to return to school on Monday.
Superintendent Mike Miles will visit the campuses with more extensive damage. These locations include Robinson Elementary, Paige Elementary, Sinclair Elementary and Pugh Elementary schools.
Students who attend these campuses may have to attend school in an alternative location until repairs are completed. The district wrote that they would provide more details about this possibility over the weekend. The administration postponed the Educators of the Year event, which was scheduled for Friday evening.
Saying they were tired of academic policies they don’t trust and what they call hostile workplaces, 100 teachers from 35 HISD campuses called in sick Thursday to draw attention to their complaints.
In a quickly organized action, the teachers are protesting the reforms engineered by Superintendent Mike Miles that not only have been installed in his New Education System schools but have a ripple effect throughout the district. It was a quiet protest unlike others with picket signs outside schools and the HISD administration building.
One of the organizers, Carly Padget, a former 5th grade HISD teacher in reading and math who resigned her position in December, said that by teachers taking this action — under the fear of repercussion — they hope to draw the attention of Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath as well as state lawmakers.
Attempts to talk with the appointed Board of Managers or Miles have gone nowhere, Padget says.
We contacted the HISD press office and asked if they had a statement to make and will update this story with that when we receive it.
The school district do not have the legal right to require a doctor’s note from employees until the third day someone is out sick, Padget says, adding that she expects some principals may apply pressure to find out exactly why anyone was out Thursday.
In November, most campuses sent out notices that they did not have funding for substitute teachers. Coverage would have to be found from within. Even retired teachers would not be brought in.
Miles has often said that no class would be left uncovered when a teacher is out, but that the district will be avoiding the use of substitutes. Having learning coaches, interventionists or teaching assistants step in for missing teachers means far less of a learning curve since these employees already know what’s going on in a class, he says.
The problem with this approach, Padget says, is that it takes these other employees away from their assigned duties and put them in charge of an entire class, often before they are ready for that responsibility.
“If there aren’t enough of those non-teacher staff members then the follow-up is you’re going to split classes and now you’re going to have 35 kids in multiple classes,” Padget says. This results in bigger classes throughout the grade level which can also mean there aren’t enough desks in a classroom to accommodate the add-ons. Making it tougher for the teachers handline these larger classes.
Reasons vary for why teachers are participating in the sick-out, Padget says. Some resent being instructed to teach in a way that they believe is bad for children. The second reason: “We’re watching really, really good teachers be removed from the classroom or recommended for termination things that have nothing to do with their instructional strategies. We have really good teachers who are being removed from the classroom for having an environment where the kids learn but it’s not what has been prescribed by Mike Miles.”
The third reason is a continuing dispute over FMLA — the Family Medical Leave Act — a complaint that has been brought up repeatedly by public speakers at board meetings, who say their legitimate claims to take care of family members are routinely denied.
Every morning, Nico Abazajian calls in to school to see if they need him. “They do not.” Thursday morning he called in sick, but was over at HISD Human Resources to try to see what his status actually is with the district.
Abazajian was walked off the Sharpstown High School campus for playing chess with his students and playing music after the kids had finished their final exam. He, however, believes the real reason was “for refusing to leave my door open, for telling the principal that he’s wrong for not letting them go to the bathroom.”Since then the teacher of U.S. history and world geography has been in limbo, a teacher who is not teaching.
Before he left, he said he heard principals in training tour the school commenting that “none of these teachers want to work.” As he understands it, that’s the mantra of the HISD principals academy, that the problems in HISD are due to lazy teachers.
“Teachers are doing this [sickout] because they are sick of being treated so poorly. Teachers are doing this because they’re sick of their students being treated so poorly.” Their needs not being met. Their rights being infringed. Teachers are so tired of being treated like we are the problem.”
Asked if this quiet protest would have much of an impact, Abazajian says, “I think schools are already struggling so much, even a few teachers leaving disrupts the entire day. And I hope that other teachers and administrators realize that teachers are the reason this whole thing functions. So on one hand Mike Miles and the administration may blame us for being lazy but without our participation none of this is possible.”
In a Tuesday press conference, as Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles enumerated all the ways he says previous administrations made poor decisions, wasting millions of dollars on unneeded expenditures and shortchanging students in the process, it was often the anecdotes that drove his points home.
Why were two of the district’s four bus barns located on the very edges of the district which just adds to costs and the poor on-time transportation performance across the district? How is it that an employee making $25,000 a year earned almost $115,000 last school year thanks to overtime pay? Another employee with a $73,300 salary ended up at $162,701?
“In June we discovered 990 people on our rolls who no longer worked here,” he said. Some as long as five years. Silver lining: only a few still receiving a paycheck.
Some issues included in the 32-page “Efficiency Report” he’d brought up before. Like the 175 buses bought for $20 million that he said the district never needed. The staff attendance policy with little to no human supervision that in the 2022-23 school year allowed 993 teachers (besides the 300 covered by FMLA) to take 20 or more days of leave and more than they were entitled to “with little or no consequence.”
The administration’s investigation was not intended as an audit Miles said nor did it uncover any signs of illegal activity. He did point out, however, that “If the system is broken there is opportunity for inefficiency, you might even say intentional inefficiency.”
However, Miles emphasized several times that he was referring to bad systems, not individual dual employees. “We can’t have a good school system without good supports from Central Office functions. “It’s not about the people failing or not doing the right things. People will operate within the system that you have in place. When big things go wrong, first look at the system.
“So we don’t blame our bus drivers for a transportation system that’s broken.”
There have been a lot of questions about how Miles is going to pay for his New Education System schools with all its programs and increased pay for teachers and administrators at those schools.
As recently as 2019, in an exhaustive report, the Texas Legislative Budget clearly stated that HISD didn’t know what it was doing at all in budgeting. Despite all sorts of guidance since then — the 2019 report noted that they district didn’t have measures in place to cut off paychecks when someone left the district — the HISD approach has not considerably improved.
Besides the buses, there is the little matter of the $1.2 billion the district received in federal emergency COVID funding known as ESSER funds. According to Miles and his administration, there was no well thought out plan of how to allocate that money. The district used $139 million for recurring expenses and a 9 percent salary increase for teachers without subtracting costs elsewhere. Well, bottom line is the ESSER funds run out at the end of this summer, Miles says, which is not good news for maintaining a solid fund balance.
He called the likened the district’s use of ESSER funds to “a spending spree,” calling it “a broken system when you have a financial system that doesn’t look at goals and outcomes and ties money to the actions.” He also said that many school districts have the same problel he was just surprised at the magnitude of it in HISD.
“We’re going to fix this. Next year’s budget will be over an $850 million fund balance regardless of the challenges they left us with.”
So what’s the district going to do? “HISD will change how schools develop their budgets.” Besides providing more oversight in general “HISD will provide and oversee the budget at NES schools.”
2. Overreliance on Purchased Services
Earlier in the year, Miles announced he was dropping an outside professional development program that would have cost the district $25 million a year, figuring the same function could better be performed in house. Previously, the district okayed nearly $3 billion in purchased services and contactors. Miles believes in-house staff can tackle many of those tasks from plumbing to writing curriculum.
In the next budget Miles proposes to cut nearly $50 million in outside services. All contracts over a quarter of a million dollars will get added scrutiny from HISD finances department personnel.
3. Inability to Track & Manage Employee Work Arrangements
In addition to an overtime system that Miles believes has been allowed to go rogue, his administrators discovered that there are more than 3,000 job codes for HISD employees. “[This] adds unnecessary complexity to tracking employees and to understanding and comparing skills and compensation needs.”
Managers also need what’s called a “service level agreement” which is “an understanding of how much time a specific task takes to complete.” Knowing how much time a job should normally take, will help managers determine how many employees they really need, the reasoning goes. So if you’re an employee who’s been taking four hours to change out the float mechanism in a toilet, you might be in trouble.
A more effective management system, the reasoning goes, will lead to a leaner Central Office and thus more savings. The plan is to standardize time clock use and overtime pay with increased oversight.
4. Low Expectations & Oversight of Employee Attendance
“Staff absences were higher on professional development days and days before or after a holiday.” This, while not prohibited by board policy, still shows “a culture that did not prioritize student learning.”
Principals and supervisors will be judged on staff attendance, and are responsible for tracking attendance and counseling them on the rules of the road. All employees must ask for time off from principals or supervisors and they have to receive permission before they can be off. In the case of a sudden illness, employees must call in asap by phone.
In helpful support, the Human Resources Department will be sending out daily “real time” notices for anyone in the danger zone of taking too many days off.
5. Ineffective Processes For Recruitment & Hiring Staff
Miles has said before he thinks too many people are involved before a hire can be made. “The number of people required to recruit and onboard a single individual was approximately 12 people across several departments and teams.”
In fact, the report says, HISD’s hiring methods take so long that it’s not unknown for candidates to drop out and go on to other local school districts. With the district facing a nation-wide teacher shortage, Miles plans to cut down the time alloted to each part of the application process
6. Dysfunctional Transportation System
“Currently the district transports only 8,700 students to and from school at a cost of $56 million a year. That means it costs over $6,400 to transport one student in a year. For context, the national per-pupil transportation spend average was $1,197 in school year 2018-19.”
Even allowing for inflation and the fact that in smaller towns the costs of bus travel would be a lot less, the HISD number seems high, accompanied by its stats showing a low average ridership number. “The district has 520 routes for its large (60-passenger buses) and the average ridership is fewer than 17 students per route. Doubling ththe number of students per bus would save the district $25 million a year, according to the report.
Of course what comes to mind immediately in how would consolidated routes wore with the magnet programs still remaining in the non-NES schools.
Anyone who attends HISD board meetings has heard form parents who say the buses are either late or don’t pick up their children at all and that calls to the bus barns achieve nothing. HISD has a new software system Edulog that’s supposed to help with routing, tracking, student ridership, driver management and parent communications.
Improvement of the bus barn operations and its buildings which are in deplorable state, will cost the district money but the report’s writers argue that this investment will pay off in increased enrollment for the district once parents realize HISD can operate a dependable bus system.
7. Highly Decentralized System of Autonomous Schools Without Commensurate Accountability
As Miles sees it, the state takeover of HISD requires an extensive rebuilding effort and one of the logn standing traditions clearly on the chopping block is decentralization. In one sense, this benefits the students who transfer from one school to another in the district only to find another completely different curriculum in place. On the financial side, an HISD untied in its buying power could reach economies of scale in book buying and programs that it doesn’t have now.
“Full autonomy without accountability must end,” the report pronounces. School leaders and staff “will have to be coached to operate as part of a larger team and a larger system.”
At NES schools, there will be little autonomy. Principals will focus on instruction rather than operational details (Central Office will pick up those.) Some other schools will be allowed some autonomy based on “The Defined Autonomy System Matrix.
8. No Unifying Vision of High-Quality Instruction or High-Quality Programming
This section overlaps with the decentralization section, making similar arguments. “In English Language Arts, HISD schools were using 30 different curricula. Schools were using 22 different math curricula.” These courses and Career and Technical Education programs were not held to any standards, in the administration’s judgment.
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