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?
The HISD board is having perhaps the most boring workshop ever this morning -- talking about Human Resources.Thank God Houston Chronicle education writer Ericka Mellon is there to blog it.She reports a momentous change in HISD policy: The Human Resources Department will henceforth be known as the Department of Human Talent. (We guess HISD's ultra-busy drug-sniffing dogs won't be involved.)Uhl confirms this to Hair Balls."It will be called the Department of Human Talent and reflects some new dire
T.H. Rogers is known as a pretty great school, in or out of the Houston Independent School District. But as my column this week ("Let the Record Reflect") shows, the principal there, Dr. Cathryn White, is at odds with several of her teachers.Quoted in the story is the Regional Supervisor who oversees Rogers, Barbara Thornhill. Teachers and union officials from the Houston Federation of Teachers told the Houston Press they had complained for months about White, but Thornhill did nothing.Thornhill
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?
"Unschoolers" like Holly Furgason don't believe in public education. They don't even believe in teachers. They believe in the ability of their children to teach themselves. Will the law catch up with them?
The results are in from the Houston ISD survey of teachers at T.H. Rogers, the school where teachers and the local union have circulated increasingly loud complaints that their principal, Dr. Cathryn White is an intimidating, arrogant taskmaster who needs to see the error of her ways, if not just leave the job. The HISD survey backed up some of the basic findings of the March survey done by the Houston Federation of Teachers. Rogers teachers scored White and the school she runs low in the areas
Word on the street from Friends of Hair Balls is that there's a lot of pro-active housecleaning going on by the regional superintendents in advance of the new Houston ISD superintendent's arrival.
Just one case in point seems to be Cathryn White, the principal at acclaimed T.H. Rogers school who came under fire from many of her teachers who said she was overbearing and underperforming.
White has announced that she is leaving Rogers -- with two weeks to go before the start of the sc
We have word from HISD spokesman Norm Uhl that the district might officially name the new superintendent at 2 o'clock. If the choice is Terry Grier, as it's been reported, some people are already unhappy. (Update: It is.) "I'm very disappointed in the board," State Sen. Mario Gallegos, who serves on the state's Committee on Education, told Hair Balls. "It makes me wonder what kind of kool-aid they're drinking over there when they interviewed him."Gallegos says that Grier's history at his prev
