At Thursday night’s school board meeting there were a smattering of speakers both for and against Houston ISD following the state’s lead allowing it to hire chaplains to supplement its counselor ranks. In any event, it was a moot point as the decision not to do this was already part of the consent agenda.

In fact, one speaker thanked the board for its decision hours before the appointed board of nine actually voted on it.

Whether the board decided to do this in recognition of the great diversity of religious belief in Houston, support for the idea of separation of church and state or because they were wary of bringing in uncertified people to potentially handle some very delicate counseling situations (in which case, yay) or because they were afraid of the backlash that might ensue if a counselor who happened to be a Muslim or a Jew worked with a child (not so much applause here if that was the reason) is anyone’s guess because, as usual, the board doesn’t explain its actions.

During the lengthy speakers list, several people pitched Superintendent Mike Miles’ own words back at him about why school should stay open on terrible weather days.

One of the reasons Miles has said schools should have remained open during Tuesday’s freeze was that without it, many children went without hot lunches that day and wouldn’t be warm with power turned off in their homes.

Yet when students returned to school on Wednesday for standardized testing not all schools were able to serve that hot lunch and had heating problems as well.

Besides the three schools that HISD announced it had to close early, parents reported other schools had significant heating and water problems.

“Will you hold Miles accountable for prioritizing testing over the comfort and safety of staff and students?” parent Brandie Dowda asked the board. “Many campuses had no heat and/or no water.”

“Where was that concern yesterday when students were shivering in front of MAP testing? And there was no running water to allow our nutrition workers to cook hot lunches?"

Ruth Kravetz, a former HISD teacher, said “You put our kids in freezing schools and didn’t close the schools until testing was done. How shameful that you think test data is essential to kids’ well-being. It’s not.”

Earlier this week, Miles acknowledged that some of the schools were not in good shape and said this was a result of earlier administrations and boards “kicking the can down the road” and not addressing needed renovations and repairs as they came up.

Stacy Rayon, said she was speaking on behalf of the parents of HISD students. “On a day when there were 580 accidents on the road due to weather conditions. “He wanted to put our most precious resources, our children, on buses that … can have accidents on dry sunny warm days.. Accidents aside, let’s talk about what the kids found when they returned on Wednesday.” She began naming a number of schools where there were heating and water problems until she was cut off by her one-minute time allowance.

Parent Karina Quesada: “Mike Miles expressed regret for having closed school on Tuesday saying that kids need warmth and hot lunches. Well, I sent my kid to school yesterday and he got a freezing cold school, crackers, a cheese stick, a Slim Jim for lunch instead.

"Later that morning his principal updated us that the main building heater still wasn’t working but the south wing heater was running . And parents who’d kept the kids home should bring them now since testing was still going on. Because priorities. You subjected kids to freezing schools, schools without water, restrooms or food because you wanted to test them.”