Eighty two degrees. When Houston ISD classrooms hit that mark, that’s when the kids inside are moved to another area of a school, Superintendent Mike Miles said Tuesday. Given the heat outside, that’s the district standard for now, he said.
“We look at 82 degrees to be too hot. Too warm for a kid to concentrate and a teacher to teach well, he said. “We use temperature guns, not just ‘This feels warm.’ We are trying to get schools to a comfortable 73, 74 degrees that’s about what we can do in the summer.,” adding they did not have to close any of the 274 HISD schools Tuesday.
He said there remained about 30 teacher vacancies in the district, explaining that those were for specialized courses such as JROTC and career tech ed positions and special ed certified positions.
A Tuesday visit to HISD’s South Division control center housed in the ample extra space at the Jones Futures Academy showed air conditioning and other facilities problems continued to dominate the call-in reports they were receiving.
The next biggest category? Transportation as the district’s adventure with the software system EduLog continued for a second day. Miles said Tuesday’s tally was much improved from the first when a number of students either didn’t have a route or were given wrong route information.. “Keep in mind, every day, kids enroll and they will enroll for the next three weeks and those kids will not have bus routes and they’ll be asking for bus routes.”
Besides visiting the temporary control center, Miles checked in at Mitchell Elementary and Thomas Middle School primarily to see how each school was adapting to the New Education System of constant testing and extended lessons in reading and math. He was accompanied throughout by South Division Superintendent Imelda De La Guardia. Board of Managers member Paula Mendoza was on two legs of the trip.
Mitchell Elementary clearly benefited from its modern building design making it easy to get with Miles’ program with its open classrooms and a Teams Center easy to access on its first floor. Also because although not an NES school last year, it adopted much of the NES model for 2023-24.
Thomas Middle School, an older school scheduled for $17 million in renovation work if the proposed $4.4 billion November bond election, was last renovated in 1978. wasn’t nearly as spiffy. The proposed up[dates which won’t handle all of the school’s needs will be concentrated on overhauling the school’s HVAC(heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system.
After observing the teaching style in a classroom, Miles would huddle with the school administrators and De La Guardia asking them what they thought was done well and what could use improvement before telling them what he saw. This was done in hushed tones, in the empty hallways away from the classroom in question.
Throughout the tour, Miles emphasized that this is only the second day of school and he saw good enthusiasm and determination from principals and teachers to get with what he has termed wholesale systemic reform.
Thomas Middle has three separate buildings for the grades on campus, with open outdoor areas between them. Asked how a campus like that would be able to adopt the one door entrance model for security reasons, Miles said his administration is proposing that it and other campuses like it will be surrounded by a fence.
In a press conference later in the day, Miles stepped back from his earlier estimate about how many students showed up for school this week. He said he would have accurate numbers later.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
