Education

TEA Community Meeting Prompts Intense Protests

TEA Community Meeting Prompts Intense Protests

Families Scramble for Childcare Amid Staff Shortages, Declining Funding and 4-Day School Weeks

Families Scramble for Childcare Amid Staff Shortages, Declining Funding and 4-Day School Weeks

I support

Local

Community

Journalism

Support the independent voice of Houston and help keep the future of the Houston Press free.

No Last Minute Reprieve, TEA is Taking Over HISD [UPDATED]

By Margaret Downing
Mar 15, 2023

Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath today announced to the Houston ISD trustees and Superintendent Millard House II that he will be appointing a board of managers and a superintendent to run the district starting in June. In the end, all the last-minute appeals from parents and teachers didn't change...
Education Commissioner Applauds HISD For Withdrawing Its TEA Lawsuit

By Margaret Downing
Mar 10, 2023

Texas Education Commissioner, Mike Morath has issued a statement in response to this week's decision by the Houston ISD trustees to drop their lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency. "The decision made by the Houston ISD Board of Trustees helps put the focus back on what matters: the students, staff,...
Texas Borrowers Brace as Student Loan Forgiveness May Not Happen

By Faith Bugenhagen
Mar 3, 2023

Prior to completing his undergraduate degree in political science and economics, 28-year-old Solomon Grimm had already accrued $25,000 in student loans. “I moved around a lot; I started out at Baylor but it was too expensive,” Grimm said. "Then I got to Sam Houston and transferred to Lamar University, in...
Opinion: As HISD Prepares for a TEA Takeover, T.H. Rogers Special Ed Parents Ask Now What?

By Margaret Downing
Mar 3, 2023

Amid the furor, trepidation and angst about what looks like the incoming invasion of the Houston ISD by the Texas Education Agency – thanks to Mayor Sylvester Turner’s heads-up at City Council – one further complication arises. Do any deals or agreements made with the HISD administration or board last...
Opinion: With So Many School Shootings, Taking a Kid’s Phone Away in Class is Wrong

By Jef Rouner
Feb 13, 2023

If there’s one thing that seems to unite the olds across the political divide, it’s a fervent belief that Kids These Days™ spend too much time on their phones. It’s one of the reasons everyone agrees strict anti-phone policies in schools are a good thing, but in a seemingly endless...
Texas Supreme Rules Against HISD, Removes Temporary Injunction to Block State Takeover [UPDATED]

By Margaret Downing
Jan 13, 2023

Houston ISD trustees and administrators who'd hoped to avoid a Texas Education Agency takeover of the district got some sad Friday afternoon news today. While far from a final determination, when the Texas Supreme Court voted to lift the temporary injunction that kept the TEA Commissioner from pursuing his plan...
How Long Will HISD's "Pause" on T. H. Rogers Special Ed Students Last?

By Margaret Downing
Jan 12, 2023

Houston ISD Millard House II has just released a statement that the district is not going to remove the special education students from T.H. Rogers as it had planned. At least not now. In November, parents of the special ed students in the PSI (Preparing Students for Independence) program had...
Opinion: Without Action, School Anti-Bullying Policies Feel Like Gaslighting

By Jef Rouner
Dec 28, 2022

Every day, the Kid With One F comes home from their Cy-Fair ISD school and hangs their ID on a thumbtack near the stairs. On the back is information for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline and the Harris Center Crisis Line. By my count, the kid has called those numbers...
HISD Board Told Moving Special Ed Children Off the T.H. Rogers Campus is a Bad Idea

By Margaret Downing
Dec 9, 2022

So whose great idea was it to move special ed kids off the T.H. Rogers campus anyway? Certainly no one was owning up to it at Thursday night's school board meeting as parents and alumni took turns walking up to the speaker's mic or Zooming in to tell Superintendent Millard...
Houston ISD Hits Pause on Plan to Move Out Special Education Kids From T.H. Rogers

By Margaret Downing
Dec 8, 2022

Following a private meeting earlier this week with some of the parents of special ed kids at T.H. Rogers who oppose the Houston ISD plans to remove those children from the award-winning school, HISD has followed through on a commitment by Superintendent Millard House II about "taking a pause." In...
Special Services May Decrease in Intensity For Deaf Kids Moved Out of T.H. Rogers

By Margaret Downing
Dec 8, 2022

In many ways Oise Akpiruo is a typical 9-year-old boy. He likes to play with toys, especially trucks. He likes to run and knows to look both ways before he crosses the street because he knows cars can hurt him. And in many ways he's not typical. Oise is profoundly...
T.H. Rogers Students Rally Support For Special Ed Program Through Self-Produced Video

By Margaret Downing
Nov 30, 2022

An eighth grade student at T.H. Rogers has produced an impressive video arguing for the continued inclusion of special education students at the elementary through middle school award-winning campus — a potent and affecting argument against the Houston ISD plans to dismantle the program. In a video entitled "THRogers PSI...
Opinion: T.H. Rogers Parents Demand Answers and Don't Want What's Happening Covered Up

By Margaret Downing
Nov 18, 2022

Friday morning's meeting between administrators and T.H. Rogers parents and others concerned about the Houston ISD plan to off-load its special education kids there back to their home schools, didn't exactly live up to how HISD likes to bill itself as "transparent." Let's count the ways. First of all, although...
Why T.H. Rogers Matters According to the People Who Know It

By Margaret Downing
Nov 17, 2022

During the 25 years Dave Muzyka was an administrator at T. H. Rogers — the first 15 as an assistant principal, the last 10 as principal — he gave hundreds of tours of his school and says visitors always left amazed by what was being accomplished in this unique school...
T.H. Rogers Special Ed Students to be Shipped Out to Their Home Schools

By Margaret Downing
Nov 15, 2022

Parents of special ed students at T.H. Rogers have received a letter dated November 15 saying that their students are going to be moved out of their specialized program at the school with its specially- trained teachers and aides and instead moved to their home schools. In that letter, with...
Opinion: Santa Fe School Board Was Right Not to Put Memorial to Mass Shooting on School Grounds

By Jef Rouner
Oct 25, 2022

This past week, parents at Santa Fe High School were outraged when the school board voted unanimously not to erect a monument to the victims of the 2018 mass shooting. The attack killed eight children and two students. Instead, the memorial will be built on land owned by the district...
The Firebrand, the Photographer, and Black Power Converge at the MFAH

By Bob Ruggiero
Oct 10, 2022

In the fall of 1966, Stokely Carmichael was a 25-year-old rising star in the the movement and struggle for civil rights and racial equality in the United States. And he was a smart, focused and powerful speaker and organizer. Recently elected as the Chair for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee...
There Was No Shooter at Heights High School Tuesday

By Margaret Downing
Sep 13, 2022

There was a threat but no shooter. There were rumors that 10 kids were taken to the hospital - also not true. Parents of students at Heights High School had a very bad day Tuesday, but far from the worst. Someone called in a false report that there was an...
Houston Girl Scout Highlights Diversity on National Read a Book Day

By Jef Rouner
Sep 2, 2022

National Read a Book Day is September 6, and a Houston-born Girl Scout Gold Award winner is encouraging people to broaden their horizons with their choices thanks to her Diverse Book Club. Esha Garg was a lifelong Girl Scout when she began her Gold Award project as a high school...
Opinion: Why Biden Needs Congress to Truly Fix Student Loan Debt

By Jef Rouner
Aug 26, 2022

This week, President Joe Biden unveiled a plan for student loan forgiveness to be enacted entirely under the powers of the executive branch. While the $10,000 loan forgiveness (plus another $10,000 for Pell Grant recipients) got all the headlines, other aspects will have potentially life-changing benefits for borrowers. These include...