Does Houston ISD really need to spend $425 million to establish three new career and technology centers and bring the Barbara Jordan center up to par?
Can taxpayers trust HISD Superintendent Mike Miles and his administration to do the right thing once they have a $4.4 billion in bond funds at their disposal?
Both questions were raised at Tuesday night’s special meeting, the first by several members of the appointed Board of Managers, the second by public speakers from the floor in what was for HISD a sparsely attended meeting in which HISD employees appeared to outnumber the audience.
“You say you’ll do the right thing with bond funds but you have proven time and time again to do the opposite,” Melissa Yarborough told the board.
“Please consider listening to the many voices from over the past few months that have told you as loud as they can that this is not the time for a bond. This is an opportunity for you to stop the process. To listen to the community, to hit pause,” said Brooke Longoria.
The other big indicator from the floor raised by more than one speaker, most notably Savant Moore, who was elected to the board of trustees but cannot serve while the Board of Managers is in place, was that the public is not buying the premise that “co-locating” some schools with others on the same campus is not in fact closing schools. He promised that unless those co-location plans are scrapped, taxpayers will not vote for the bond.
“If you want this bond to pass, take [out] those 15 co-locations.” he said in an emotional address that continued past the buzzer on his one minute of allotted time. He predicted that developers would come in and with eminent domain would take people’s homes located near the schools being moved.
The workshop meeting was called to answer continuing questions about the bond proposal, scheduled to go to voters on November 5. Before that, the measure still has to be approved by the board and they have an August 18 deadline to make that decision.
Not mentioned in the discussion was the recent Hurricane Beryl damage to several HISD schools and in some cases the damage inflicted in the May storm.
Asked for an update, HISD issued a statement that read :
HISD was significantly impacted by Hurricane Beryl. Two hundred of our campuses lost power. Fifty campuses had trees down and 60 reported some roof or structural damage. Currently, 20 campuses remain without power.
Many of our schools had minor damage – a few had more significant damage. Our facilities team along with outside crews have been working around the clock to get campuses back online and ready to serve students.
At this time, the campuses that received the most extensive damage are Sinclair Elementary, Cage Elementary/Project Chrysalis Middle, and Kelso Elementary.
Sinclair Elementary was also impacted by the May derecho. School and division leadership are communicating with the Sinclair community weekly and will continue to do so to prepare families for the first day of school.
We are doing everything possible to get these campuses ready for the August 12th start of school. Campus leaders will reach out to families at these campuses in the days and weeks to come to share updates on the recovery and to share details about any impacts storm damage will have on the first day of school
.As previously stated, HISD says the summer school students will not have to make up the week of classes lost to Hurricane Beryl. Students whose home schools are still not operable are being bused to other locations.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the need for four [CTE] facilities,” said Cassandra Auzenne Bandy. “It seems like we are bearing the burden of maintaining a CTE facility times four.” With constant technological advances. how will HISD maintain the facilities to make sure they’re state of the art? she asked.
She also asked about how the district looks at school choice for a way students who want to study a certain CTE program can get to where they should be. Miles said some parents are choosing that route. The problem is, Miles said, most of the HISD high schools only offer a handful of CTE courses. “Most of the high schools that have a dozen [CTE programs] don’t have the facilities to offer even more modern sorts of programming and it’s cost prohibitive to do one teacher. So we’d still have the problem of access if we just did choice in the district.”
Miles has explained that one reason the four centers are needed is the travel time it takes to get students to CTE classes which impinges upon their core classes they must take to graduate. A large factor in all this also is the agreements the district has with local businesses who’d like to see theupcomign workforce develop certain skills.
Trustee Jeanine Gardner Lindner questioned the prelationship with business partners in regards to the CTE classes. “How do we know that they’re going to stick around?,” adding that “I thinkk it’s important to xxx what business partnership means for the district.”
The administration rated its school on its needs, judging which ones would need to be replaced and which ones needed renovations. Part of the assessment, Miles said, was how large the bond could be without triggering an increase in the tax rate.
Although anyone expected a quick turnaround on the replacements had to be disappointed with the news from Chief of Finance and Business Services Jim Terry who said in his experience it takes two years to build a new elementary school and four or more for a high school.
To keep the bond “down” to $4.4 billion, Miles pulled up a chart showing both what the bond would cover and what it will not. Despite the need, for example, of transportation upgrades which Miles has talked about before, that category did not make the cut.
As he has stated before, Miles pointed out the size of the bond was due to too long deferred improvements that the district set aside. “We haven’t had a bond since 2012. And elementary since 2007. All the while the needs have been growing.”
As designed, the bond would devote $1.1 billion to health and safety, $1.1 billion on “future ready” meaning course content and technological improvements and $$2.2 billion that would go toward restoring 43 schools.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
