District dilemma

HISD must close its budget gap and fix schools needing improvement before it’s too late.

It’s a civic crime in a city known for its can-do spirit that so many straight-A students are graduating from low performing high schools within the Houston Independent School District only to arrive at college to find themselves woefully unprepared. It’s wrong that too many students drop out before achieving the credential of a high school diploma when the success of our region depends on a prepared workforce.

No question that parents, public school officials, church leaders, the business and non-profit communities and political leaders have tolerated the status quo at HISD for too long at an unacceptable cost to students, families, the community and our region.

But now, action at the state and local level has all but mandated change, and Superintendent Richard Carranza, the district’s relatively new superintendent, has taken his foot off the brakes. As a result, the bureaucracy is careening down a hill at high speed toward an unknown destination.

Carranza is trying to steer the district toward greater equity, but unfortunately, his board of trustees can’t agree on the direction. Meanwhile, the Texas Education Agency threatens to grab the wheel, with no guarantee that the appointed state bureaucrats have any better ideas for the path ahead.

Its enough to make you want to yell: “STOP!”

At the very least, local and state education leaders need to articulate a plan for HISD — and so far they’re failing at every level.

A new state law fuels the breakneck pace. If a district doesn’t turn around low performing schools, then the state can replace a school board or take over individual campuses. HISD currently has ten such low-performing schools, putting Houston in danger of losing public input into district governance.

Or, to put it bluntly, Houston faces a regime of taxation without representation.

None of this is made any easier by HISD’s $115 million estimated budgetary hole, carved out by the state’s broken school finance system and the board’s own questionable decision-making, at the same time as it’s cleaning up after Hurricane Harvey.

HISD must achieve certain goals this year: Close the budget gap, fix the schools that need improvement, and make the changes that will keep the next set of schools from sliding into the improvement-required morass.

Carranza and the board have floated a slew of proposals: revamping the choice program, overhauling the magnet program, centralizing decision making and changing the way schools are funded.

Yet the litany of ideas seems utterly disconnected from the necessary goals, lending these proposals all the coherence of a pile of unmatched socks.

Is the purpose of a new centralization policy to save on expenses? Or is it a shift in managerial philosophy?

Is the proposed reduction in extra funding to students who are learning English necessary to close the budget gap? Or is it being considered to achieve equity?

Change without a sure sense of direction can be as harmful as no change at all.

The local district isn’t the only governmental entity guilty of lax communication.

The law says that HISD can forestall state takeover by either closing and reopening campuses or partnering with nonprofits. Yet Texas Education Agency officials are still creating the framework for how these partnerships must work, as reported by Chronicle reporter Jacob Carpenter.

We’re sure that lawmakers relied on solid research in enacting this law, yet parents remain bewildered about how closing and reopening schools will improve outcomes for their students.

The TEA has a responsibility to address parents’ key concern: It looks like their kids are being subjected to an unproven experiment.

The net result of the past few months is that parents and educators have expended angst over the district’s whirlwind approach — energy that could have been more positively and constructively channeled.

Parents are used to a bumpy ride at HISD, but no one wants to be in the car when a wreck looks almost inevitable. Many who can are already seeking private or charter school alternatives.

Our local heroes, the teachers who are working in the classroom every day, are angry, frustrated and worried.

But perhaps HISD stakeholders’ biggest fear is that despite all the changes, nothing really will change at all, and students will end up at the place they started — one of diminished opportunity.