SCHOOL’S OUT?
‘STOP SAYING WHEATLEY IS A FAILURE’: COMMUNITY FEARS HISD TAKEOVER MAY CLOSE FIFTH WARD CAMPUS
Samuel Ollison, a junior at Phillis Wheatley High School, already has started working on his backup plan.
He spends his free time looking into schools he should attend senior year because Houston ISD may be taken over by the Texas Education Agency at any moment, and he has heard rumors his school may close.
“I’m nervous, honestly,” Samuel said. “They say my school is the No. 1 factor in why TEA is taking over HISD. … We just need to do better at this school because I really don’t want Wheatley to get shut down or for the TEA to take over.”
It’s an uncertain time for students at Wheatley, as the 96-year-old Fifth Ward campus continues to be thrust in the spotlight for its multiple failing accountability grades, which put the district at risk of losing its superintendent and elected board. Meanwhile, rumors are circulating about what will come of a possible state intervention, leaving parents and students alike in fear of the school’s closure.
Samuel grew more concerned when he read an article in which Mayor Sylvester Turner said TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told him HISD has two options — appoint a board of managers or close Wheatley. Other public figures since have made similar comments.
State code indicates that closing a school is an option, but the TEA never has said that it plans to do so. Morath has spent years pursuing the other option — appointing a board of managers, which temporarily was blocked by an injunction. However, the TEA declined to comment on the mayor’s remarks or whether it intends to close Wheatley.
With the future murky, Samuel is trying to find a school that is close to the Barbara Jordan Career Center, where he takes welding classes, as well as his mother’s work. He’s considering Jack Yates or Austin high schools, both of which are farther away.
For some students, like Samuel, the rumors surrounding the potential state intervention have been nerve-wracking. Others, however, feel much more apathetic about it all after hearing Wheatley’s name constantly mentioned in the same breath as the takeover.
Kathy Blueford-Daniels, a Wheatley alumna and HISD board member, worries the attention has stigmatized the school.
“I wish people would stop saying Wheatley is a failure,” Blueford-Daniels said. “Our children are hearing that, and they are thinking they are failures. But they’re not. Wheatley produces productive people.”
As LaTroya Jackson, a freshman, makes her way through the hallways, she hears her principal’s voice over the loudspeaker offer words of encouragement to students to keep moving forward and try their best, despite what they might be hearing about their school.
But she still hears from other students throughout the district that HISD is at risk for state intervention. She’s told Wheatley is to blame.
“I kind of agree with them,” LaTroya said. “So I mean, you can’t really get upset or anything when they say these things, because it’s true.” The freshman ultimately decided to go to Wheatley for its early career program that would allow her to graduate high school with an associate’s degree. She then may have to go to college for only two years to earn a bachelor’s, saving her time and tuition, she said.
Wheatley certainly wasn’t Jackson’s top choice. She put in a school choice application listing DeBakey High School as one of her top choices but ultimately didn’t get a spot at any of her picks.
Legislator urges change
Stories like these don’t come as a surprise to Rep. Harold Dutton, a Democrat and Wheatley graduate, who authored an amendment to the 2015 bill that required TEA to replace a district’s school board or close campuses that had failing accountability grades for five consecutive years.
“This (school) system was not designed for you to get an education in northeast Houston,” Dutton said. “It’s designed for you to get on a bus every morning, bypass your neighborhood school, and go across town to get an education.”
Dutton watched the school struggle over the years and felt compelled to do something, so he began working on legislation that would encourage state intervention in districts with campuses that were long struggling.
“All of us went to Wheatley. My mother and seven of her children went to Wheatley, but when it comes to my children, none of them went to Wheatley,” Dutton said. “That was just always a sore spot in my mind and heart.”
Despite public outcry, Dutton believes the district is in need of intervention. Legislators filed a bill earlier this week, designed to soften the law that triggers state intervention and stave off an HISD takeover. However, Dutton doesn’t think this is the right move.
“Just because someone doesn’t comply with the law doesn’t mean we should do away with the law,” Dutton said. “I look at this as a way of child abuse, because I think failing to educate a child is a form of abuse. When CPS determines you’ve abused one child, they are going to take all of them. I think that rule ought to apply to all of them.”
Academically, the school has significantly struggled and has seemingly flatlined in the last decade. The percent of students “approaching standard” on the English I end-of-course exam was just 40 percent in 2021-22, compared to 41 percent in 201415, one of the years the school earned an “improvement required” ranking.
Attendance was just 89 percent in 2021-22, with chronic absenteeism over 30 percent, double the state average. The graduation rate was shy of 75 percent in 2022, up from just 67 percent in 2014-15.
Meanwhile, it also has seen a decline in enrollment, like the rest of the district. Currently, it has 740 students enrolled, a 16 percent drop from where it was 10 years ago.
This wasn’t always Wheatley’s story.
Wheatley’s storied history
In fall 1950, Wheatley was actually overpopulated with about 3,300 students who had to attend classes in shifts because there wasn’t enough space. Classes were being held in the library because it was so congested, according to Houston Chronicle articles.
A new campus had to be built at the school to accommodate its growing student population. It had a 1,500-seat auditorium, a gymnasium, an industrial arts facility and a swimming pool, costing a total of $2.5 million, making Wheatley the most expensive public high school in Houston at the time.
Wheatley went on to produce several notable alumni, including NBA player Dwight Elmo Jones, recording artist Archie Bell and Ruth Simmons, the first African American president of Brown University and most recently the head of Prairie View A&M before she left to join Rice University in an advisory role.
Throughout the years, the school’s enrollment began to drop and subsequently, the dollars tied to that enrollment. By 1976, the school was in the bottom 12 percent for reading scores, according to a 1978 Texas Monthly article. In 1995, the Fifth Ward school had the highest dropout rate and lowest math score of the high schools in Houston ISD.
From 2014 to 2017, it earned an “improvement required” rating from the state, and in 2019, under a revamped accountability system, the school earned an “F.” Ratings were paused in 2018 for Hurricane Harvey and in 2020 and 2021 for COVID-19.
In 2022, the school earned a “C,” but some argue that the standards were lowered.
Either way, the previous streak of failing ratings, in part, triggered a takeover battle that slowly made its way through the courts.
Joseph Williams took the helm of the school as principal in 2018, not long after the district was put on alert for a potential takeover. When Williams first took the job — he knew “time was of the essence.” His first priority was to improve the school’s culture and morale.
“In some cases, there was apathy with some of the scholars,” Williams said. “We just wanted to revive the spirit. When you just keep hearing your name and it’s associated with this negative thing, it can kind of wear on you.”
He tightened up the attendance policy and restructured the classroom layout to make sure grade levels were grouped together, allowing administrators to better monitor students.
They implemented an online merit system, where teachers could award students points for good attendance or high scores. They could cash in the points they earned for snacks or a free hoodie.
Willliams left the position in 2022 and was succeeded by Sabrina Cuby-King, who was determined to keep the school’s momentum.
“We knew we had to be laserfocused on students who didn’t pass the STAAR and intervene early,” Cuby-King said.
One strategy was intervention blocks, which was an hour built into students’ schedules where they could work with teachers in small groups going over concepts they struggled with.
That extra time paid off, Cuby-King said. When it was time for students who failed the STAAR retest in December, they saw double-digit gains compared to the previous year, with about 70 percent of the students passing the exam on the retest, she said.
The school saw some modest improvements on test scores and earned a “C” for its most recent accountability rating. This is a point many education advocates, lawmakers and critics of state intervention make when talking about the potential takeover.
Anxiety over intervention
Regardless of whether TEA ends up taking over HISD or closing Wheatley, parents are on edge. LaTroya’s mother, LaTonia Busby, is anxious about the looming decision. She worries about how a takeover could affect the quality of her daughter’s education.
In the event of a takeover, Busby said she probably would put her daughter in another school district — even if it meant moving to a different part of the Houston region.
“For the sake of her education, I would be willing to uproot where we are and move to another area,” Busby said, “just so she can have opportunities, so she can have a chance.”