It was when she was at an in-person meeting filled with Houston ISD personnel last week about her 7-year-old with limited verbal skills and no one could tell her what her daughter’s course of study would be that Dina Kushaliyeva reached her limit.
Since May she and her daughter had been bounced around about whether she was staying or going from her home school Sinclair Elementary as part of the special ed consolidation ordered up by HISD Superintendent Mike Miles. Memorial Elementary was another possibility. Then HISD told her they couldn’t find her daughter in the system. Kushaliyeva got the final word just days before the start of school: The second-grader would be moving to Wainwright.
Kushaliyeva thought by meeting in person she could better understand what her daughter could expect. During her meeting at Sinclair they also talked by conference call with several special education people from Wainwright. As well-meaning as these people were, she says, no one seemed to have a firm grip on what her daughter’s course work would be. “I still don’t know who her teacher is going to be. There is no schedule, nothing.” So, she made another decision:
“Monday, my child is coming to work with me,” says the clinic director and advocate special education advocate. “I am not sending my child to a school that is not prepared to take her. She’s a non-verbal child. She is an autistic child, a regular daily schedule is very important to her.”
Welcome to Houston ISD’s 2026-27 school year where in addition to the February decision to close 12 schools whose students are being funneled elsewhere in the district, some 5,000 special-ed students are going to have to hit the road. With today’s start of school, many of these students and their parents aren’t at all sure where they’re going or what they will find when they get there. Teachers and administrators seem a bit befuddled as well.
In late April news began leaking out that Miles had decreed that special ed students would be restricted to certain campuses. HISD presented this as the best way to serve these students with special ed expertise concentrated on certain campuses. If a school has only a few special ed students, wouldn’t it be better to move them to a campus with more resources to handle their special needs? But what HISD presented as logical efficiency, others saw it as a lack of understanding about the needs of special ed children.
Many parents filed complaints with the TEA, pointing out changing where a child attends school should be determined in an IEP meeting that concludes the move would be in the child’s best interests. It should not be because a district wants to move children and then amends their special education plans to achieve what it has already decided.
These parents called it segregation not only in terms of what restricting special ed kids to certain campuses, but also as a possible end to mainstreaming. Special ed kids, they fear, will spend their days in contained special-ed classes, rather than be allowed to attend general classes and mix with other students as much as their abilities allow.
As they see it, this will be a return to how special-ed children were kept separate from all other students in public schools in the ‘50s and ‘60s, long before mainstreaming began and the IDEA Act (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) was signed in 1975. They worry that special-ed children will be hidden away once again and the advances made in recent years are being abandoned.
Meanwhile, nearby Conroe ISD has decided to go in the opposite direction and return special ed students as closely as possible to where they are zoned to go to. It will also reduce that district’s transportation costs. Reading online comments, parents there are split about decentralization merits, many of them making the same arguments that Mike Miles and his Deputy Superintendent Kristin Hole have made: that special needs kids will be better served by being concentrated on fewer campuses.
The TEA told HISD (in a July 7 letter to its two conservators assigned to watch over the district’s historically troubled special ed program) that it can’t just change a student’s IEP (Individual Education Program) without getting parental consent first – something HISD hadn’t gotten around to in many cases. And that not doing so was in violation of federal law.
In addition, TEA said, the IEPs are by law supposed to “consider the potential harmful effects” of moving a student to a new location. The district could also be in violation of Section 504 Civil Rights protections. The U.S. Department of Education has launched its own investigation into what HISD has done.
Despite this, HISD is marching on with its plans as it hurriedly tries to reach special ed parents by phone. It has issued statements that it is in fact following the law and ensuring that all needed IEPs will be updated as provided for by federal law. Its next deadline is October 8 to get TEA deadline a final report saying that it has completed all actions required by law or it could face sanctions.
Caroline Marney spent 13 years with HISD, five years at an elementary school and eight years as special ed department chair at Northside High School. Frustrated by what she saw as continuing chaos, she resigned.
“The people who’ve been leading special education, if you look at the last two years, they’ve all left. I think they all leave because they know it’s all about to hit the fan and they don’t want to be blamed,” she says.
Which is not to say the special-ed system pre-takeover was perfect, she says.
“I think I’m one of the few who was happy when the [TEA]conservators came into the office of special education. There needed to be a change. It was not functioning well. Before they came we would sit in meetings and we would just get yelled at.” The tone changed with conservators who were helpful and professional, she said.
“There are things that they say that are right. We want smaller classes in special education. It would be easier to educate kids in one grade level versus having five grade levels in a classroom. Those things are correct. But the way that they go about it is pure chaos all the time. And that’s why I left. It was nonstop chaos,” Marney says. .
There should have been a lot more study and input considered before any special ed students were moved anywhere, she says. Not only did parents not know what was going on, but school personnel including principals and special ed teachers and department heads didn’t know either, according to Marney..
In May, after parents started receiving letters telling them their children would be moved to a different school, Marney says they called the schools with questions. At Northside, Marney says she and other school personnel would have to tell parents they didn’t know. “I’m sorry. I haven’t gotten a list. What does your letter say?”
The first deadline TEA gave HISD to get parents to agree to a change in their children’s IEPs was on August 1. In late July, HISD began calling parents at home, asking them to agree to amend the IEPs to reflect the new school their children were being sent to.
Although many people are suggesting it is illegal to amend an IEP by getting consent over the phone, it is not, Marney confirmed. But whoever is asking for that consent has to make sure the parents know what they are agreeing to, she says.
Preferably an IEP committee meets in what’s called an ARD (Admission, Renewal and Dismissal) meeting to discuss what the best plan forward is for the student and how that can be accomplished.
Parent and advocate Jane Friou advises parents to refuse to agree to anything over the phone and ask for an in-person ARD meeting, which by federal law they are entitled to have.
Special ed students moved from a small to a large school can have special difficulties, she says, using as an example a special-ed student who is able to play on the football team at his smaller school, who most likely will never get to do that at the larger school he’s being sent to.
Another former longtime HISD special education employee who did not want her name used for this article – we’ll call her Mary Jones –when asked why she resigned, says “Because they dismantled special education.
“Putting people with no special education background in leadership positions over special education was frustrating because they did not have the background; they did not know what they were doing,” she says.
According to Jones, pressure was put on teachers to do what some of them considered unlawful or unethical. In many cases this was because the new leaders simply don’t know the law, she says. Teachers who objected to this were given reprimands, she adds.
Moving special ed students to more time in contained classrooms “is a step back in civil rights,” Jones says. “This is like 1960s special ed. It is not a model under current law.” She believes because of the district’s actions in special ed since the state takeover, “it was obvious Miles doesn’t know special education law.”
“The law says they have the right to be educated alongside their non disabled peers,” Jones adds.
Teachers and principals were no more in the know about the special education plans than parents, Jones says. “It was done on the sly, in secret actually.” Which also means their input wasn’t sought about the plan.
Parent Emi Sei has a different problem. Her son is not being moved. He’s a fulltime student who can attend attend general classes at Love Elementary in the Heights but needs a one-on-one aide as provided for under federal law.
“When they say it’s 5,000 students [affected] it’s not just 5,000 students,” she says. Pulling teachers and aides into a select group of campuses can mean fewer resources at the schools that will continue to operate as home schools that include special ed, she says..
.She already knows that some responsibilities have been added on to one of the teachers there and she doesn’t see how that person is going to do as many things as she’s been assigned, not only for her own son but all the special ed kids there.
And then, of course, there’s the question of who’s going to teach these classes. Given the national shortage of special ed teachers, parents also want to know whether the teachers with their children are certified in special education.
The next meeting of the HISD Board of Managers is this Thursday at 5 p.m. at the Hattie Mae White Education Center, 4400 West 18th. Parents of special ed children say they plan on being there.
