This election cycle is a big one for the Houston ISD Board of Education. There are nine, single-member trustee seats on the board, and trustees serve four-year-staggered terms. This means that, normally, every other year, four or five of the seats are up for election. This year will be different for a number of reasons.
In the past, there have been other races on the ballot with school board elections, namely city council. But, because Houston voters approved a change in city council terms in 2015, and since this is an off year for state and federal elections, there are only a few things to vote on during this election.
On November 7, the ballot will include just the HISD School Board elections, the HCC Trustee elections, and some state and local propositions. Turnout will be different than past years, probably lower--making every vote count even more than usual.
Where did all that money go? I don’t know. And you don’t either. Your vote doesn’t matter, because whether HISD has more or less money next year won’t make a bit of difference to our kids as long as parents don’t pay attention to how that money gets used. And they have to pay attention longer than one or two months to know whether anyone is telling the truth or just saying the right buzz words to get us to all calm down and go home. Who cares about who’s recapture projections are right if no one is going to pay attention long enough to find out?
Thus far, this special education crisis has been a failure of the administration. That same administration just picked this vendor. If the board authorizes this contract and expects to rely on the output of this vendor as a material part of its response, the board will be a part of the problem rather than the beginning of the solution.
I suggest that the board table this vote, finish listening to parents, and then work out how, who and what will give them the independent information the need to put new policy and new expectations for the administration in place to end the crisis.
In the end, I pray 1) that our school leaders see that repeating the past will only produce more of what we already have, 2) that Houston ISD gets the opportunity to evolve from the soul-crushing metrics of raising standardized test scores by a few points and 3) that all HISD stakeholders become invested in delivering the holistic environment and enriched curriculum that maximizes the individual potential of each and every child.
We must think bigger. Our children deserve better.
My kids are in kindergarten and prekindergarten which are not testing grades. However, my three and five year old already know the word STAAR and their experiences at school will be dramatically impacted by the testing that takes place on their campus this week.
Ultimately, if your family has the wrong combination of members or doesn’t conform to certain gender roles, you are excluded at these GOMM events. This exclusion is hard to reconcile in a public school setting, particularly one such as ours where our district and campus have committed to be free from discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, religion and other manner of diversity.
This example of exclusion and bias is not what we want for our kids.
To the rest of the trustees, you need to ask yourself... 1) Why HISD is relying more and more on Alternative Certifications to staff its classrooms? 2) Is this staffing model is equitable to all kids? 3) And is the item in front of you which allows the district to grow TFA teacher by as much as 150% next year taking the district in the right direction?
Could you imagine honoring the memory of someone who went on record to say that – NAACP– stands for The National Association for the Agitation of Colored People, or that Rosa Parks was just a paid protester, or that African Americans who protested at lunch counters around Harris County in the 1950s were simply trying to create an issue?
What if I told you that this person once served on THIS very school board and fought relentlessly for decades AGAINST desegregation in HISD? This person was James M. Delmar– namesake of the new $35 million athletic complex directly behind Houston ISD headquarters.
The children of Houston need a school district less focused on the STAAR. Less focused on what the TEA wants to hear and more focused on what our kids actually need. For the first time in many years, we have a progressive Board of Trustees who trust teachers to do their jobs, who want to invest in the arts and other evidence-based programs to educate the whole child and rely less on standardized testing as the primary measure of success. However, it seems that many of those values walked out the door last Saturday when the TEA consultant walked in.
Promotion standards, or the requirements students must meet in order to move on to the next grade level, have recently been a significant topic of discussion in the Houston Independent School District. Given that the Board of Education and the district’s senior administration are seeking to overhaul these promotion standards in 2017 and in recognition of the fact that the current standards were put in place prior any sitting trustee’s tenure on the board, HISD Parent Advocates provides this brief to summarize the policy’s origin, history, and effectiveness as well as propose best practices and guiding principles that parents believe trustees should include in the design of the district’s new standards.
