Thursday night, the state-appointed Houston ISD Board of Managers decided it was a good idea to vote to close 12 of its schools — all with predominantly black or brown student bodies — during Black History Month.
At the end of the 2025-26 school year, eight schools will shutter and four others will move to either be consolidated or “co-located” with existing schools. According to Superintendent Mike Miles it wasn’t academics that was the problem at the about-to-be-closed schools; declining enrollment and aging buildings did them in.
The special meeting was a lively one, presided over by Board President Ric Campo who kept turning off the recorded sound between one speaker and the next after members of the audience got more unruly than he was comfortable with. Somewhat defeating the idea of a historically accurate live stream and transparency.
Campo called for a quick recess after parent Sim Kern jumped atop the speaker podium. Whoever was the camera operator for HISD’s fixed camera remained pretty much focused on Campo during this exchange, which made it all the more bizarre for home viewers when Kern’s head floated up in front of Campo’s at one point. (Viewers from home didn’t get to see Kern stand atop the dais.) In time, Kern was helped/escorted down by HISD police officers.
While the board huddled in a back room. HISD’s chief of Facilities & Maintenance Operations Alishia Jolivette took to the floor to tell the audience that they needed to “be calm” so the meeting could resume.
Superintendent Miles interjected what he called a short preamble to the presentation on why the schools need to be closed. The elected board before his tenure had a list of schools they were considering closing but “they punted it and said ‘Let the Board of Managers handle it.’”
“I’ve resisted bringing to the board a list of schools for three years even though most people expected schools to close.” Each of those schools was able to raise its student scores, he said, meaning that those schools are being closed because of their declining facilities and/or low enrollment, not academics.
Still, no one in the audience Thursday was there to applaud the closures and relocations. Instead, their one-minute addresses ranged from tearful pleas, to calls for action (an especially impressive one by Thunder Chen of the PSL, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, as Chen called for raised fists and cries of Justice) to telling the Board of Managers (who skedaddled right after the vote) that they should be ashamed of themselves.
Parent Vianey Torres pointed out that students will be transferred from Port Houston a B-rated school to Pleasantville which is a C-rated school.
An effort to prove that closing these 12 schools was not a sudden and poorly thought-out action kind of backfired. HISD General Counsel Catosha Woods and Alishia Jolivette, HISD chief of Facilities & Maintenance Operations, both stressed that years of studies and careful lengthy evaluations of these and other schools in the district.
The follow-up from the audience was swift. Why then, speakers asked, wasn’t the public brought in on any of these discussions? Why wasn’t there any gathering of community input in all that time?
Several speakers also took issue with Miles and his administration for calling the meetings they had with parents at the affected schools over the last two weeks “community involvement.”
If the meetings were only for parents, that’s not a community meeting, elected trustee Dani Hernandez said. And second, critics said it’s a mischaracterization to call this “involvement” when parents were told what will happen as if the decision was already made.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said decisions about closing schools “require real partnerships with parents, teachers and stakeholders. That did not happen here. Families in my district told me they were completely blindsided.”
And State Rep. Carol Alvarado who attended the information session at Cage Elementary Wednesday night wasn’t any happier. “This is the latest in a pattern of policy-making designed to limit minimize input from the public.”
Parents from Port Houston showed up in force but were unable to change any board member’s mind as they did in 2014 even when pointing out what they consider a very unsafe walk from Port Houston to Pleasantville Elementary.
According to HISD Chief of Staff Monica Zdrojewski, parents they talked with are most concerned about safety and transportation. Safety cannot be an afterthought,” Garcia said. “You cannot say this is about students while ignoring how they will safely get to their schools.
HISD has come up with a workaround for this. For two years, shuttles will run round trip between the closed schools and their new ones.
How the district will work around the bathroom problem at Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men is another question. The district is moving students from Fleming Middle school and McReynolds Middle School to Mickey Leland, which was built to be a single-gender school.
According to Chelsea Jordan who taught there for eight years. “There are multiple boys bathrooms but one girls bathroom in the entire building. This is an obvious example of HISD making decisions without explaining logistics. There’s no space to put additional bathrooms.”
As stated at the February 12 meeting, teachers who are at the shut down schools will still have jobs if they are rated at Level 2 Progressing or above, but those at Level 1 Progressing will have to depend on their principals to retain their jobs.
The changes approved by the board Thursday:
Alcott Elementary will close. Students will be redirected to Mading Elementary.
Briscoe Elementary will close. Students will go to Carrillo Elementary.
Burrus Elementary will close and students will go to Kennedy Elementary.
Franklin Elementary will close and students will go to Gallegos Elementary.
Henderson Elementary will close and students will be moved to Bruce Elementary.
Port Houston Elementary will close and students will be redirected to Pleasantville Elementary.
Ross Elementary will close and students can go to either Roosevelt Elementary or C. Martinez.
Cage Elementary will be co-located with Lantrip Elementary.
Fleming Middle school and McReynolds Middle School are to be co-located with Mickey Leland College Preparatory Academy for Young Men.
Hobby Elementary will co-locate to Lawson Middle. Pre-K and kindergarten students at Hobby will move to Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center.
Middle College High School at HCC Gulfton will be absorbed into Liberty High School.
Correction, February 27, 2026 11:04 am: The original article misidentified the HISD employee who urged calm at the district's special meeting. Also, there is no human operator of the camera filming HISD board meetings. The meetings are filmed by a fixed camera. The Houston Press regrets the errors.