Plenty of tests await next chief of HISD
Former colleagues say superintendent brings a calming presence
Early in his tenure as an associate superintendent with Oklahoma’s Tulsa Public Schools, Millard House II found himself thrust into an education administrator’s nightmare: closing campuses and redrawing school boundaries.
Faced with declining enrollment, House’s boss moved in 2010 to shutter 14 campuses spread throughout the city under a plan called Project Schoolhouse. Among others, he relied on House to marshal as much support as possible for the effort, which inflamed deep passions throughout the city.
Ultimately, Project Schoolhouse went off remarkably well given the circumstances. For that, former Tulsa officials give much credit to House, who later orchestrated the logistics of the closures as deputy superintendent.
“He was one of the key players,” said Bob Burton Sr., who served as Tulsa Public Schools’ chief of staff at the time. “He made sure that his principals, community members, parents — if they were going to be affected, everyone was aware of what that would mean for their children.”
The episode required many traits — a calming presence, strong communication skills, a sense of empathy, a willingness to listen — that have become hallmarks of House’s career, catapulting him from a physical education teacher in his native Tulsa to the soon-to-be superintendent of Texas’ largest school district.
House is expected to join Houston ISD next month after the district’s school board plucked him from relative obscurity and named him its lone superintendent finalist this month. Texas school districts must wait 21 days after choosing a lone finalist to sign a contract under state law.
Details of House’s compensation package are not yet known, though his predecessors, former Superintendent Richard Carranza and current Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan, both earned a base salary of about $345,000.
The 49-year-old, who currently leads Tennessee’s seventh-largest district, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, brings no significant Houston connections and a modest résumé by bigcity standards. Former colleagues, collaborators and acquaintances, however, warned against underestimating the 26year educator and married father of two.
In interviews, they described House as an open-minded, datadriven, no-drama executive capable of navigating the kind of complex challenges and competing interests he will face in Houston.
“Just temperamentally, I think Millard has a lot of humility as a leader,” said Chiefs For Change CEO Mike Magee, whose organization tapped House to join its exclusive education administrator network. “He’s going to want to make sure he’s seeing the work from a variety of points of view, taking a collaborative approach to changes in the best interest of kids.”
House’s managerial chops will get their greatest test to date in Houston, a district with nearly 200,000 students — five times more than Clarksville-Montgomery County — and significantly sharper political divisions.
Within the first several months, he must tackle immediate administrative challenges: rebuilding a thinned-out cabinet, budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 stimulus funding, catching up students who fell further behind amid the pandemic and analyzing the needs of longstruggling campuses.
In the longer-term, House will be tasked with rebuilding HISD’s reputation after years of negative headlines, particularly as the district eyes its first bond election in a decade in 2022. He also will face thorny questions about the distribution of resources to campuses and the fairness of HISD’s school choice system, two issues that have bedeviled the district for years.
House’s tenure will be under threat from the outset, as Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath continues to push for the ouster of HISD’s elected school board due to chronically poor accountability ratings at Wheatley High School and a state investigation that found several instances of trustee misconduct. Morath’s plans remain on hold pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by trustees. If Morath prevails, he could replace House with a different superintendent.
For now, House starts with support from HISD’s often-fractured school board, which unanimously voted to name him lone finalist. That show of unity, combined with largely positive reviews from his past stops, has bred measured optimism headed into the summer.
“Everything I’ve heard has been good,” said Jasmine Jenkins, executive director of Houstonians For Great Public Schools, a nonprofit that closely follows the HISD board and endorses trustee candidates. “I know he brings innovative ideas, is not afraid to think outside the box and seems like a fast learner. I’m excited about that potential.”
House initially agreed to an interview for this article but later canceled due to scheduling issues. A Clarksville-Montgomery County schools official responded to several questions in writing about the district, but House did not respond to additional questions about his background. In an introductory press conference last week, House said he will “continue to focus on equity and innovation to lead HISD.”
‘Like a father figure’
Although he grew up in a family of educators — his father, Millard Sr., retired as a Tulsa Public Schools associate superintendent and his mother, Anna, spent 30 years as a teacher and counselor — House initially planned a different path.
After graduating from Tulsa’s historic Booker T. Washington High School, where he played point guard, second base and drums, House enrolled at the small liberal arts University of Montevallo in central Alabama.
In an interview last month with the Clarksville Community Network, House said he aspired to become an exercise physiologist or go to physical therapy school, but he could not find work or get into a competitive post-graduate program in 1995. So, he returned home and “did what anybody would do: I got a job at a barbershop.”
A local principal noticed her students gravitated to House’s chair, prompting her to convince him to substitute teach and get certified, House told the Clarksville Community Network. After three years as a physical education teacher and one as an assistant principal, Tulsa officials tapped House to run one of the district’s longest-struggling campuses, Anderson Elementary School on the city’s lower-income, predominantly Black north side.
Within five years, Anderson produced “some of the highest standardized test scores in its history,” the Tulsa World reported at the time. House moved on to his next challenge: starting a new campus.
In partnership with the thennascent charter network KIPP, House and Tulsa officials opened a college preparatory middle school about a mile from Anderson Elementary in 2005. Unique Foster, a member of KIPP Tulsa College Preparatory’s inaugural class of about 70 fifth-graders, said House drilled home the school’s three pillars — desire, discipline, dedication — with a mix of grit and grace.
“He was like a father figure to us, always there, even if we just needed a quick pep talk,” said Foster, who invited House to her commencement ceremonies upon graduating from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2017.
House’s work and demeanor so impressed the district’s new superintendent in 2008, Keith Ballard, that Ballard offered him a central office position after touring the KIPP campus once.
House spent five years in Tulsa’s central administration, rising to the position of deputy superintendent. He oversaw 60 elementary schools, assisted with the creation and implementation of staff performance evaluation systems and worked on a five-person team charged with finding $15 million in budget cuts.
The road to Tennessee
House’s career took a different path in 2012, when he joined Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina as chief operating officer. The role focused largely on nonacademic aspects of the district, home to nearly 150,000 students.
House resigned after one year, and to date, he has not publicly discussed the reasons for his departure at length. In an interview this week, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board president Mary McCray said she could not comment on the details of House’s resignation.
“I can say this on the record: We did not have concerns about his character, his honesty or his willingness to get the job done,” McCray said.
House shifted to an executive director position in Charlotte with New Leaders, an education nonprofit that helps develop education administrators. After two years, House went to work for IH Consulting in Fort Mill, S.C., helping various organizations “build upon organizational mission and goals,” according to his resume.
Few details about IH Consulting and House’s work during his twoyear stint in that role are known. South Carolina business records show no history of a company called IH Consulting, and the organization does not appear to have an online presence.
House did not respond to questions about that time in his work history, and HISD board president Pat Allen said she did not have any information to provide about that period.
House returned to public schools in 2017, when Clarksville-Montgomery County school board members picked him from a pack of seven finalists. During his tenure, House has instituted several new initiatives — a fasttrack program for high schoolers interested in becoming teachers, an early technical college, a Spanish immersion program at an elementary school — while largely maintaining support from all ends of the district.
Constance Brown, president of the Clarksville-Montgomery County Education Association, which represents classroom staff and support personnel, said House’s leadership contributed to the district offering in-person classes for nearly all of the 2020-21 school year amid the pandemic.
“He understands that students have to be in a safe environment with supports to be able to learn,” Brown said in a statement.
‘A test for anyone’
While House arrives in Houston with numerous character witnesses to his credit, the hire still represents something of a gamble.
House has a limited track record as superintendent, particularly in light of the pandemic.
In 2018-19, students in Clarksville-Montgomery County scored fractionally lower on reading exams and slightly higher on math tests compared with 2016-17, the school year before his arrival. The district received a Level 1 rating, the lowest out of five possible scores, on student growth in both subjects in 2019 under Tennessee’s academic accountability system. Standardized tests were not given in 2020.
In addition, House’s signature projects in Clarksville-Montgomery County largely have been limited to a few campuses rather than districtwide systems.
House’s education policy beliefs also remain somewhat nebulous. While he mostly has aligned himself with reform- and accountability-minded organizations — the kind generally opposed by the Houston Federation of Teachers, which maintains modest-to-strong influence in HISD — former colleagues said House is hardly a staunch ideologue.
Still, HISD trustee Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca said House’s disposition will help the district and school board as it navigates numerous hot-button issues.
“He’s had past experience with having tough conversations, bringing in the community, bringing in the board and having everyone sort of aligned,” Flynn Vilaseca said.
Burton, the former Tulsa Public Schools chief of staff, said House adeptly navigated the sharpedged politics of his hometown, giving him confidence in the Bayou City’s newest superintendent.
“Houston is a test for anyone,” Burton said. “But trust me, he’s going to ace the test.”