Our children deserve to be seen as more than a marketing opportunity. They deserve a school that is funded, staffed, and respected. We have attempted to reach out via private networks to no avail, so we hope that this open letter will encourage your response and a dialogue rooted in transparency and mutual respect.
I am a mother of three children at Lantrip as well as the PTO president. I write on behalf of several concerned parents. As representatives of the Lantrip Elementary community, we write to address the reported interest of H-E-B and its former President, Scott McLelland, in “adopting” our campus through the Good Reason Houston model. While we hold a deep appreciation for H-E-B’s long-standing commitment to Texas communities, we must provide necessary context regarding the current state of Houston ISD—context that is essential for any partner seeking to make a genuine impact.
Lantrip Elementary, once a high-performing, A-rated Environmental Science magnet school, has undergone a staggering transformation. Following the state takeover and the imposition of Superintendent Mike Miles’ “Houston Promise” and New Education System (NES) models, our school has undergone a top-down, HISD mandated destruction. This decline is not a reflection of our students’ potential, but rather a direct consequence of a rigid, unproven curriculum that has alienated our community and hollowed out our resources.
For any partnership to be ethical and effective, it must reckon with the following realities. First, under the current administration, Lantrip has lost the very pillars of a well-rounded education. We currently operate without a librarian, a school counselor, or dedicated art and music instructors. A “partnership” that ignores these vacancies is merely a cosmetic fix for a structural crisis. Second, our school suffers from systemic instability.
In less than three years, we have seen a 30 percent decline in student enrollment and the departure of a significant portion of our veteran teaching staff. The teachers and parents, instead of HISD leadership, are frequently framed by said leadership as the guilty parties. This is no way to lead. Miles’ leadership model combines this blame with top-down mandates over the lived experiences of parents and educators, and it is wearing thin. Third, current funding at Lantrip has been reduced to approximately $7,000 per student—a figure thousands of dollars below national standards and significantly lower than the supplemental funding directed toward the Superintendent’s flagship NES campuses.
We fear that the “adopt-a-school” framework, when applied in a vacuum, risks providing a veneer of private-sector approval to a model that is fundamentally anti-democratic. State takeovers that bypass local stakeholders often serve to disenfranchise the predominantly Black and Brown communities they claim to help. By entering our school without engaging the PTO or the faculty, potential partners inadvertently signal support for this exclusionary approach.
We respectfully urge Mr. McLelland not to allow Lantrip to be used as a symbolic victory for a failing administrative experiment. Our school does not require performative philanthropy; it requires advocates who demand accountability and a return to community-led excellence.
True partnership requires the courage to listen to those on the front lines – these are the teachers and the families at Lantrip Elementary and at all HISD schools. We invite you to meet with Lantrip families and teachers to discuss how a corporation of H-E-B’s stature can support authentic, sustainable public education—rather than subsidizing its dismantling.
— Lauren Zentz, on behalf of myself and other concerned parents