Don’t ask, don’t tell.
If Houston ISD goes all the way with a committee proposal and gets buy-in from the Texas Education Agency it will not only get to hire uncertified teachers at will without asking permission each time, and it won’t have to tell parents what it has done.
HISD is working through the process to become a District of Innovation that will free it from all sorts of state education regulations as it seeks to improve the academic standing of students throughout the district.
A seven-member District of Innovation committee unveiled its draft this week, a proposal that will be reviewed by HISD’s District Advisory Committee on Wednesday and is still to be approved by the Board of Managers.
Among the 10 waivers it has recommended, HISD would no longer have to apply for state approval on a case by case basic for such things as a longer school year, larger class size, or teacher certification exceptions.
In addition it would no longer be mandatory that parents get a letter home or other form of notification about the uncertified teacher in charge of a class and could decide for themselves whether they wanted to object to this.
The district’s argument: “Providing written notice to parents and guardians is an unfair assessment to otherwise competent, high-performing teachers who may have not yet received their certification. Rather than focusing attention on teacher certifications, the District should be focused on its primary goal, which is supporting student achievement.”
Critics are asking: if there is nothing wrong with hiring uncertified teachers for regular classes or the district’s DYAD programs calling on community members with expertise in one area or another, why wouldn’t the district be upfront with parents that HISD is doing this?
As for the teachers themselves, they have not been happy for weeks upon learning that Superintendent Mike Miles wants to move to 185 days (eventually) instead of 172, starting the school year much earlier in August. He also wants a regular waiver allowing the district to expand on class sizes as needed without seeking class by class approval from the Texas Education Agency,
HISD wants to implement its own teacher appraisal system to begin its used in the 2024-25 school year. And it wants an exemption from a state attendance requirement for class credit for high school students.
Arguing that students’ out of school work and learning opportunities especially for P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College) and CTE (Career and Technical Education) courses are important and should be factored in instead of an arbitrary attendance percentage requirement (90 percent or 75-90 percent if a special course of study is completed), HISD wants to do away with a mandated attendance requirement for credit.
The proposal also would do away with the present zero tolerance policy for kids caught vaping in school, which mandates they be sent to a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program for violating the school’s Code of Conduct. With no discretion for even first-time offenses, these students being pulled out of their classes may do more harm than good.
As it stands now, the draft calls for doing away with designating a campus behavior coordinator, saying that such tasks “should be the shared responsibility of all administrators and teachers.”
Another waiver would allow more than two days a year for upper level high school students to visit colleges and universities.
After Wednesday’s DAC review and feedback , the DOI Committee will then post the finalized DOI plan on Friday. The DAC will meet again on Tuesday, November 14 and is open for public comment at that time. If the DAC approves the plan it will go before the School Board at its December 14 meeting. Once HISD settles on the final version of its plan, it will be submitted to the TEA for approval.
HISD contends that it needs this flexibility to move the district to its high-performing goals for students. Nearly all the districts in the Houston area have already applied for and received DOI status.
Here’s the draft in its entirety:
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
