HISD and a paid trustee get entangled in the spreading empire of a private firm touting safe alternative schools for troubled kids. So why are some students and parents so scared?
Next week's Houston Independent School District Board meeting coincides with its self-imposed January 15 deadline for whether it will continue to fork over $17 million a year to the private Community Education Partners for its two alternative schools here. CEP and HISD agreed to a contract extension last August 15 (the first deadline). At issue: the cost of the program, as well as a groundswell of criticism that the facilities don't do a good job of teaching anything and are warehouses for unwan
It looks like Austin ISD is ready to take the Houston ISD route and dump some of its troubled kids into the hands of Community Education Partners, the for-profit operator of alternative schools throughout the country. CEP operates two facilities here in Houston and as we've noted before, seems to be an academic reservoir for minority students in the district that the schools don't want. In a recommendation to the board, various Austin school district administrators say that despite their best ef
Last night the Austin school board squelched, at least for now, any consideration of a partnership with Community Education Partners, the Nashville-based, for-profit operator of alternative schools that has two facilities in Houston. CEP would have operated an alternative center for students in the eighth and ninth grades who were falling behind in their classes. "The Board of Trustees has put the brakes on further consideration of the CEP proposal, maybe not indefinitely, but for now," Andy Wel
Is Yvette Lacobie really a terrorist? Did legislators really mean to kick kids out for a butter knife? Is zero tolerance really stupid? (No, maybe and yes.)
Ungraded exams. Suspect scores. Departing teachers and lawsuits. Is this alternative school really passing the test on its highly touted educational claims?
Last week when Hair Balls reported that LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens) had sent letters to the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts saying it should investigate Houston ISD for the amount of money it spends on two private alternative schools, we were told our figures were incorrect by HISD spokesman Norm Uhl.
The precise figure Uhl objected to most was 811. That represents the number of HISD students who have graduated from the two
Robert Kimball, the former Houston ISD educator, who has spoken long, loudly -- and not positively -- about the two alternative schools operated in Houston by the for-profit Community Education Partners (where HISD parks its kids it deems bad), had every hope that Tuesday would see an end to the $4.7 million lawsuit filed against him by CEP.
Kimball and his lawyers had presented a motion for summary judgment, arguing among other things that it was ridiculous that C
