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While Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles' plan to introduce offerings such as photography, gardening and fitness classes in the New Education System and NES-Aligned schools has struck a chord with many kids excited about new experiences, in at least one school it's not been all smooth sailing.
As one parent posted online recently, the spin bicycles at Wainright Elementary remain in their boxes, set off in a corner of the cafeteria. We wondered whether that's because there's no volunteer instructor or no room to hold classes.
Shades of all those stories over the years throughout the country of new computer equipment being delivered to schools and ending up unused in classroom closets.
As it turns out, that's not exactly the case here.
Joseph Sam of the HISD press room got back to us with an explanation saying the district ordered so many spin bikes for all the New Education System and NESA-Aligned schools all at once that they had to use several different vendors. And one of them didn't do as complete a job as hoped.
The official HISD statement:
"In order to ensure we had enough bikes available at all campuses, we had to order bikes from multiple vendors. One of the vendors shipped the bikes unassembled. In order to ensure our students can use the bikes safely, we need to work with an additional vendor to get some of the bikes ready for student use. As soon as we can get all the bikes safely assembled. students will be able to use them."
The spin bikes and other elective offerings are part of Miles' DYAD program designed to bring volunteer experts (at no cost for their services) from the community into the schools. The parent who questioned why the bikes remain in cartons also researched how much they cost and calculated that at the lowest price she could find ($300 a bike) times 19 per school times 85 schools, the total price would be $484,500, not including shipping or taxes.
So whether you like spin bikes or not, whether you think the money should be spent some other way, or whether you think this should have been resolved sooner, in any case, this is something HISD is working on now.
