HISD reinstates speech, debate stipends
Houston ISD has restored stipends for speech and debate sponsors for the 2024-25 school year after initially excluding them from the list of eligible employees.
HISD announced its compensation plan for the upcoming academic year in early March, including a link to all positions that would be eligible to earn stipends during the upcoming school year. The district offers stipends for duties that are unrelated to an employee’s primary job, such as working days outside of their normal schedule.
The posted list initially did not include several positions, such as academic coaches, teacher mentors, speech and debate sponsors and department chairs, who earn stipends this year. The district also removed stipends for sponsoring yearbook, newspaper, student council or robotics in New Education System schools but kept the stipends for employees at non-NES schools.
Jessica Neyman, HISD’s chief human resources officer, said the removed stipends were “an inefficiency” and “extraneous.” She said HISD expects employees to go above and beyond in a high performance culture, and the district was “not going to nickel and dime” every time an employee did something a little extra.
Since then, HISD has restored stipends for speech and debate sponsors, who will earn a yearly stipend of $1,010 in middle schools and $1,930 next year in high schools.
Under the previous compensation plan for the 2023-24 school year, middle school debate sponsors earn stipends of $720, $1,010 or $1,295, while high school debate sponsors earn $1,360, $1,930 or $2,500, depending on their level of experience.
Speech and debate sponsors were not listed to receive stipends as of March 15, and it’s unclear when the district added the position back to the list of eligible employees. The district did not respond to a request for comment about why or when the role had been added to the list.
State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said during a District Advisory Committee meeting on March 19 that he didn’t know why stipends for debate coaches had been removed and would check why they were not listed.
“I love debate … and I’d be surprised if a debate coach who’s actually going out to debates and taking the kids out to debate doesn’t receive some sort of stipend,” Miles said.
Several people spoke out about the removal of stipends for certain employees during the HISD school board meeting on March 21, where they urged the board to restore stipends because of the value that extracurricular activities provide to students and the extra time that sponsors spend working with students outside of class.
Eric Emerson, a Houston Urban Debate League board member, told the Board of Managers that debate “gives students a voice in a way that no other activity does” and cutting stipends for debate sponsors would undermine the educational well-being of HISD’s students.
“This is an investment that provides educational opportunities for the kids … and if you cut the budget for the stipends, our lesson is that, in 2008, when we didn’t have the stipends, no (high) school in HISD had debate,” Emerson said. “The only one that did was Bellaire (High School.)”
The district has also made minor adjustments to the compensation plan since it was first published publicly on March 5. The plan now states that the overtime pay for employees can not exceed 10% of their total salary, which is a reduction from the initial limit of 30%.
It also states that the teacher pay table for employees in schools outside of the New Education System applies to dyslexia interventionists, librarians, media specialists, nurses, speech therapists and multiple other positions. The initial draft of the proposed compensation plan did not list the pay details for librarians and certain other employees.
The compensation manual is still pending approval from the Board of Managers, which is expected to vote on the budget in June. If approved, the plan will go into effect on July 1.