Houston joins cities fighting takeovers
Democratic leaders await Texas decision on seizing control of public schools
HOUSTON — As Houston braces for a decision from the state on whether it will seize control of public schools in Texas’ largest city, Houston officials and residents are scrambling to hold the line against potential takeovers that the city’s Democratic leaders see as driven by politics in a state where Republicans control the Statehouse and governor’s office.
Election fumbles and accusations that local leaders unlawfully reduced spending on law enforcement are also igniting potential interventions from Republicans, who have been losing ground around Houston over the past decade.
Intertwined in this are issues of race as Houston has a large Black and Hispanic population.
Houston is the largest city in the U.S. where potential takeovers of local institutions are roiling heavily minority communities, including St. Louis and Washington, D.C. It’s also an extension of a broader fight in the U.S. of statehouses flexing control over municipalities.
What’s different in Houston, local leaders say, is the range of efforts aimed at controlling how America’s fourth-largest city — home to over 2 million people — runs classrooms, elections and budgets.
Republicans reject accusations of politics, saying they have a duty to act.
“What you’re seeing is just specific fights about, quite frankly, what is the best public policy,” said Republican state Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston, who is a carrying a bill that would allow the state to take over a local elections office for cause.
“Do you want to have defunded police or not? Do you want to have competent elections administration or not? Do you want to have an uncorrupt school board of your largest district or not? That’s really what the fights are about,” he said.
Renee Cross, the senior executive director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, said it could be 10 to 20 years before the tension eases up between the GOP-run state government and Texas’ Democratically run large metropolitan areas, including Houston.
“Until the Legislature is a little more diverse in terms of partisanship, I think we’re going to continue to see these efforts,” Cross said.
It is unclear when the state will make a decision about the Houston Independent School District, which with nearly 200,000 students is the eighth-largest in the U.S. Teachers and administrators have been on edge since Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a City Council meeting this month a takeover could be imminent, citing conversations with Houston legislators.
The decision is up to the Texas Education Agency, which said in a statement it was still determining next steps that “best support the students, teachers, parents, and school community.” A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who appoints the state’s education commissioner, did not return a message seeking comment.
The state began considering the move in 2019, following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and years of chronically low academic scores at one of its roughly 50 high schools. Since August 2016, the district has had three superintendents.
The district sued to block intervention, but changes in state law in response to the lawsuit and a ruling by the Texas Supreme Court in January cleared a path for the takeover.
When the district’s board of trustees voted Thursday to officially end its lawsuit, board member Elizabeth Santos said: “It is time for the community to come together and win by uniting our voices at the Legislature and our neighborhood schools and at the ballot box.”
Local leaders acknowledge the district has had problems but say a takeover now would ignore recent improvements, including reducing the number of low-rated schools from 50 to 10. But some Houston residents still have concerns.
Nikki Keyser said she does not think Superintendent Millard House II is right for the job, believing the interim superintendent he replaced was responsible in part for recent strides and should have been given the job.
“When you’re held accountable for your behavior, these are the things that happens with our children’s district and the only people that are suffering are our parents and our children,” said Keyser, executive director of the Simply H.E.R. Movement — a nonprofit that helps provide food and housing to needy residents.
Hispanics are the largest demographic group in Harris County, which is home to Houston. It also has a large Black population.
When Republicans approved new voting restrictions in 2021 that outlawed expanded voting options that Houston had put in place, Democrats called it an attack on minority voters.
Turner is finishing up his final term as mayor and the leading contenders in the officially nonpartisan election to succeed him are all Democrats.
He took part in a recent rally for the district, where some said the recent confrontations with the state were at least partly due to partisanship.
“We are dealing with people functioning on the extremes and therefore they believe they can come in and take over the largest school district in the state of Texas. … And people are going to be all right with that?” Turner told The Associated Press. “No, I beg to differ.”