Plans, hopes

HISD can fix Kashmere High if given another chance.

Optimism is running high among HISD officials that its state-mandated turnaround plan for Kashmere High School will satisfy requests from the Texas Education Agency to avoid intervention.

Richard Carranza, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, expressed confidence at last week’s special board meeting to approve the plan for submission to the state. “I have never seen a turnaround plan with this much documentation in my 29 years of education,” Carranza told district trustees. And Wanda Adams, HISD board president, has voiced confidence that the district has done enough to avoid a state takeover.

Pardon us if our optimism is more guarded.

The district had previously submitted the turnaround plan for Kashmere in June 2016 and in October, and both times TEA informed the district that it was missing key details. We find that troubling given what’s at stake. As reported by the Chronicle’s Jacob Carpenter, if state education officials don’t accept the district’s plan, the state education commissioner could close the campus, order new management of the school or take over the district’s board of trustees.

The state’s intervention is a result of a state law passed in 2015. House Bill 1842 allows the TEA to shut down campuses or remove an elected board of trustees if a single school — repeat, a single school — goes five straight years with an “improvement required” rating. The bill is overkill and needs to be reined in. Local control, help from the state in the form of advice and adequate funding, and strong community support should be enough to turn around a troubled school.

However, the question now facing the district is whether it provided the TEA the kind of detailed, robust plan that will result in a dramatic turnaround in academic performance at Kashmere. District officials are confident they have done what they have been asked to do, and if that’s the case, it is important that TEA Commissioner Mike Morath give HISD a fair opportunity to continue the progress that already has been made.

Located on Houston’s northeast side, Kashmere is the only school in Texas that has failed to meet state academic standards for eight consecutive years or more. Of the 600 mostly black and Hispanic students, 87 percent qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, according to the HISD website. The hope is the plan submitted to TEA reflects a strategy to build on progress that school leaders say has been made in the past two years, address the challenges that students face and provide them the springboard to further their education and prepare to become productive members of society. Failure to do otherwise is an unacceptable and dangerous prospect for the Kashmere neighborhood and all of Houston.