With feuding at new low, HISD board on a tightrope
Over the past year at the Houston Independent School District, we’ve seen parents arrested at the district headquarters and soap opera-style Facebook posts from one of the trustees. However, last week’s school board meeting sank to a new low of feuding that still somehow shocks. There were allegations of racism, corruption and hypocrisy, even before a controversial motion was sprung to appoint former HISD head Abelardo Saavedra to replace Grenita Lathan as interim superintendent.
The HISD roller coaster continued over the weekend when Saavedra announced that he would not be taking the interim superintendent position. His reason was astounding in its blunt assessment of HISD.
“The dysfunction is not at the superintendent or leadership level,” he said. “It’s at the board level.”
Then, late Monday afternoon, all nine school board members and Lathan held a join news conference that, as one attendee described it, was like watching “kids told by their parents that they need to apologize.”
While it was difficult to ignore the scowls and body language of some of the trustees at the news conference, they said all of the right things to have us believe that positive change is possible. There was an apology for past behavior, a commitment to work together in the future and even talk of a possible “resolution of reconciliation” to be discussed at this Thursday’s special board meeting. But after the drama of the past week and this shaky showing of camaraderie, will anything really change at the board table?
There is no doubt that current HISD trustees are navigating our district through an extraordinarily tumultuous time. Substantial recapture payments to the state are leaving the district with an increasing need to make budget cuts. HISD is facing a drop in enrollment that can translate to a loss of up to $40 million of its $2 billion budget.
The district has lost decades of experience in outgoing senior staff. These were the people who in previous years could be trusted to keep basic operations running, regardless of the caliber of leadership at the top. And, in what is possibly its most pressing challenge, HISD is attempting to avoid a school board takeover or school closures by the Texas Education Agency for having schools that fail to meet standards for a fifth or more straight year. Part of this effort may include discussions of charter partnerships that were a source of strife this past spring.
The stress to our school board members is amplified by the constant scrutiny of a conservator appointed by the TEA. That observer opines on everything from the amount and type of communications between trustees and administrators, to the number and types of meetings trustees attend, to the number of minutes the board spends every month talking about each of various issues the TEA, through its Lone Star Governance model, believes is appropriate for school districts.
At this point, it may be unreasonable to believe that this group of nine trustees, with these nine different personalities, experiences and priorities, will ever like or trust each other. However, if this board is going to make a good-faith attempt to move forward, it must agree on standards governing trustee behavior. These standards must require that that trustees stop talking to each other through press conferences that substitute showmanship for difficult dialogue.
They must require that there be an understanding among trustees that discussions intended to be confidential remain confidential. They must recognize that, while all of their positions bring power and privilege, that power must be used judiciously for the good of the body as a whole and, most important, for the good of our students.
If our trustees can collaborate on standards of behavior, with buy-in from all parties, and create some semblance of a united front, there is a possibility that they can take on these difficult challenges with the power and strength necessary to succeed.
I urge our board to do the work necessary to make this goal a reality.