With no discussion, the appointed Houston ISD Board of Managers in a unanimous decision Thursday night made a sea change in how the district operates, voting to become a District of Innovation. To the astonishment of absolutely no one.
The one surprise was that Superintendent Mike Miles who had led the push for the district to seek the distinction wasn’t there to take his victory lap. Turns out he had a good reason — he was out of town at his son’s college graduation.
Almost every surrounding school district already operates under District of Innovation status. Why it’s taken HISD so long — it was turned down once before Miles ever got here — may speak to continued trust issues on the part of the HISD community as to what their elected or appointed boards and the accompanying superintendents are up to.
Part of the intensified community scrutiny and opposition to Miles’ plan was that it went far beyond just lengthening the school year, starting classes weeks before the fourth Monday in August.
Under the new policy, HISD will also be able to hire uncertified teachers without approval from the state although an earlier clause that would have allowed it to do so without letting parents know that their children were being taught by an uncertified teacher was dropped after considerable public outcry.
It will launch its own teacher appraisal system and be exempt from the statutory requirement that a student caught vaping must be sent to a Disciplinary Alternative Education school. In a related action, school counselors won’t have to be certified any more.
Another exemption that would have allowed larger class sizes without state approval was also dropped after receiving considerable opposition from the community.
Documentation and reasoning from the administration have been available on the HISD website. What hasn’t been heard from are the Board of Managers’ reasons for supporting the superintendent in this. Long gone are the days when individual elected board members would weigh in, often at length, on why they were voting the way they were, would acknowledge differing community opinions, from time to time unveiling their own doubts before homing in on the course of action they’d decided.
As excruciatingly tedious as sometimes those meetings could be at least parents, students, teachers and concerned community members could see how the wheels were turning in the trustees’ heads and that their viewpoints had been considered, not just ticked off a to-do speakers list. .
Agenda review meetings are gone as well — those week-in-advance-in depth dives into what was coming up at the next board meeting in which again, board members would ask questions and state their views. They’ve been replaced by work sessions which can be on pretty much anything including the most recent session on how they can be better board members.
A total of 55 speakers signed up to address the board and were allowed to speak at the mic at the front of the room, not relegated to the back as in last week’s meeting. Not all of them showed but many of those who did argued against the DOI status as well as how Miles’ new policies were being carried out in the district. Several spoke of teachers being bullied by administrators saying this often happens in front of their students.
The one difference from prior meetings was that more than just a few — including elected board members Sue Deigaard, Judith Cruz and Dani Hernandez — said Miles and his system should be given a chance. Deigaard said the previous elected boards had failed students by allowing inequities to exist. “Fifty-nine percent of third graders are not reading on grade level. That happened on our watch.”
Jane Friou, parent of a special ed student, drew the audience’s attention to the goals and constraints portion of the agenda packet, pointing out that in several places, there are no precise numbers, just XX percent and YY percent put in as filler. She questioned how the board could vote to approve the plan (which they did) without exact numbers.
She asked the board to delay its vote until Miles’ administration completes the documents. “Your superintendent works for you and you can ask for more. I serve on a non-profit board. I would never approve something like this if that was this incomplete.”
One bit of unintentional humor occurred when Dr. Jim Terry, Chief of Finance and Business Services. ready to make a brief presentation about the Financial Integrity Rating of the district to the board, became impatient when the tech crew couldn’t get his charts to come up on the screens. After finding out the board didn’t have any copies handy of his report either, he wanted to press ahead and just read off the numbers.
Board President Audrey Momanaee thought about this for half a second, if that, and said “no.” She adjourned the meeting until the technical issues were overcome and the board, and all the audience, could see what he was talking about.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
