Reprieve wouldn’t affect HISD proposal
Superintendent says district plans to move forward either way
Houston ISD plans to move forward with significant changes to 15 low-performing schools, regardless of whether the district receives a one-year reprieve from state accountability ratings, Superintendent Richard Carranza said Thursday.
In a meeting with the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board and reporters, Carranza described the proposed changes as “good recommendations for improving student performance.” Under the pro- posal, the district would hand over control of individual schools to outside organizations, or close and reopen campuses with entirely new staff and programming.
“We would not make these recommendations if we didn’t feel they would strengthen the programs at these schools,” Carranza said.
In another matter, Carranza and board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones criticized state lawmakers and the Texas Education Agency for failing to prop-
erly fund public education and, specifically, special education services.
Both criticized the TEA’s recently released draft action plan for dealing with special education. They noted that while the agency is asking the state for $84.5 million in new funds, few of those dollars would help districts shore up their programs. Carranza said it was the state that had penalized school districts if they identified more than 8.5 percent of their students as special education, a move that appeared to be driven by cost savings.
“The state really needs to take the responsibility now of saying, ‘If you have a student with disabilities, we understand that there’s an additional cost associated with that, and that cost should be provided to (independent school districts), so there’s no barrier to students getting what they need in school,’ ” Carranza said.
Low-performing schools
The proposed changes to low-performing schools, first announced on Saturday, come as HISD faces the possibility of the state taking over the district’s school board.
Under a new state law, the TEA can employ a takeover if any school receives a fifth straight “improvement required” rating for poor academic performance this year. Ten HISD schools have received four consecutive “improvement required” ratings heading into this year.
Rather than risking the potential state takeover, HISD has proposed the partnerships or closures at all 10 schools. Both options would delay triggering the new state law for at least two years.
But dozens of school districts are lobbying the TEA for a oneyear reprieve from accountability ratings, arguing that student performance will be unfairly skewed by the effects of Hurricane Harvey. If HISD is given a reprieve, the district would have an additional year to implement its own strategies for improving student performance, without having to surrender control of campuses to outside organizations or closing schools.
The TEA has not announced whether it will grant the reprieve. No timetable for a decision has been given.
Regardless of the agency’s decision, Carranza said HISD will move forward with proposals for the 10 chronically low-performing schools, along with five other campuses that have failed to meet state academic standards in recent years.
Administrators haven’t announced which schools would become partnerships and which campuses would be closed and reopened. They also haven’t named potential partners. Additional details are expected to be released at a Feb. 1 school board meeting.
“We’re being thoughtful, and what we’re saying is we’re going to have a conversation with those schools and those school communities first, and then everybody can get the plans,” Carranza said.
District officials said they don’t plan to partner with charter schools, focusing instead on nonprofits and higher education institutions.
Still, some community members have argued partnerships too closely resemble the charterschool model.
Under the partnerships, HISD would surrender staffing decisions, academic choices and governance of schools to outside, unelected organizations. Charter schools are also run by unelected governing boards, which dictate staffing and curriculum.
Unlike the charter school model, HISD and its elected school board would retain control over budgeting, facilities and logistics at each campus. In charter school districts, the unelected governing board has control over those areas.
HISD and its board also has authority to choose its partners. The TEA selects which charter school applicants can open campuses in the state.
Special education
The TEA issued the draft special education plan after the U.S. Department of Education found this month that the state illegally set an 8.5 percent benchmark on the number of students receiving special education services, well below the national average of 13 percent. A 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation found the practice led school districts to deny or delay access to special education services to tens of thousands of students with disabilities.
The state’s plan calls for hiring 46 TEA staffers to oversee district efforts to fix special education practices, and contracting with third-party vendors to provide information to families and professional development to teachers. It also recommends establishing a state fund to help school districts pay for providing compensatory special education services to students who were denied in the past, but districts would still have to shoulder most costs.
In HISD, the district has already added several special education parent liaisons, tasked with helping guide parents through the often-confusing path to getting children tested for and enrolled in special education. They’ve provided professional training to principals, hired an external auditor to review the special education department and created an ad hoc committee to study the subject.
Carranza said he has not heard any conversations about the state covering such additional costs.
“If there’s anything we would say to the state of Texas, it’s that you have to be able to invest in the services for students with disabilities,” Carranza said. “Whatever the accountability plan is going to be for those changes, the state has to step up and have increased accountability in terms of funding to meet the needs of our students.”
Lauren Callahan, a spokeswoman for the TEA, stressed that the corrective action plan submitted to the governor is still in draft form. She encouraged parents and educators, including Carranza, to send them feedback by either completing a survey or by emailing TexasSPED@tea.texas.gov.
“We are seeking every public comment we can get, and from that feedback there will be revision,” Callahan said. “We’re taking every comment that comes in seriously and are giving each one a good, hard look.”
Funding is a sensitive subject for HISD.
On Saturday, HISD Chief Financial Officer Rene Barajas said the district will likely face a $200 million budget shortfall during the next school year. In order to close that shortfall, Barajas proposed drastic changes to the way HISD funds and staffs its schools. Those include shifting staffing and many spending decisions from principals to central administration, cutting roughly $116 million in non-school-related costs and reshaping how the district operates its school choice programs.
‘Where’s the pushback?’
Skillern-Jones said she expects trustees will feel parents’ fury about these proposed changes and spending cuts, especially if they’re approved. She said she found it curious that many often criticize school districts for program and staffing cuts when the state provides fewer and fewer dollars to public education.
“We continually see people in Austin not being held accountable,” said Skillern-Jones, who was elected board president last week. “Where’s the pushback when the $5 billion from education was cut (in 2011)? It still hasn’t been fully restored — where is the pushback?”
“But yet when we make the changes necessary to keep the school district’s doors open, let alone keep it viable, but keep the doors open, then we get pushback,” Skillern-Jones added. “These are hard choices we have to make because we have to, not because we feel like it.”