HISD trustees: No intervention needed
Officials say problems at schools targeted by state are being addressed
Houston ISD trustees were defiant a day after being warned of a possible state takeover, arguing that they’re already turning around troubled schools and don’t need outside meddling from Austin bureaucrats.
Trustees on Wednesday heralded improved school ratings from the state and vowed to invest in longstruggling schools, which must improve to avoid potential state intervention. If about a dozen chronically failing schools don’t meet state academic standards by 2018, it would trigger provisions of a Texas law that could result in campus closures or the appointment of a school board manager.
“We intend to fight this in the classroom,” Trustee Rhonda Skillern-Jones said. “We think our kids are capable of learning. We are going to give them the tools to do that.”
Under the law, passed by the Legislature in 2015, any district with a school receiving five consecutive “improvement required” ratings faces state intervention.
Texas Education Association officials warned Houston-area lawmakers in a meeting Monday of the possibility of a state takeover of HISD, one of several large urban districts facing such an action. The 2015 law largely flew under the radar prior to the meeting and subsequent media reports.
In Houston ISD, 13 schools and two charter schools recently taken over by the district from Victory Prep have already received “improvement required” ratings in 2014, 2015 and 2016. If they do not receive a “met standard” rating in 2017 or 2018, it could trigger the law.
Houston ISD officials consider 10 of those 15 schools most at risk because they have already received four or more consecutive “improvement required” ratings heading into next week’s release of 2017 scores.
School leaders believe
they have more time to turn around the other five schools, all of which have received three straight “improvement required” ratings.
Located in poorer areas
The 15 troubled schools are located in south, east and north Houston, in predominately black or Latino neighborhoods. All but one serve a student population with more “economically disadvantaged” students, as defined by the state, than the district average.
Skillern-Jones and board president Wanda Adams argued at a news conference that significant progress is already being made at the troubled schools. They said they’ve seen the 2017 ratings — which haven’t been publicly released — and expect a few of the 10 most-troubled schools to meet the state standard.
Board members and district staff declined to release the results or identify which schools will make the grade.
Skillern-Jones said the board’s focus is to get all chronically failing schools to meet state standards. But if forced to choose between a state-appointed manager or closing a campus, she’d rather be forcibly removed from her seat than vote to shutter a troubled school.
“I know what happens in my community when a school closes, and I don’t want that to happen anywhere,” Skillern-Jones said.
Trustees Anne Sung and Jolanda Jones said in separate interviews that they could not envision voting to close any schools in the next school year. Trustee Diana Davila said she anticipates that all of the district’s “improvement required” schools will improve their status in the next year or so, as she has seen several schools achieve the same feat in the span of a couple years.
Trustees said successes elsewhere in the district, the nation’s seventh-largest, have been lost in the conversation.
From 2015 to 2016, the number of Houston ISD schools classified as “improvement required” dropped from 56 to 37. And when accountability results are released next week, Skillern-Jones said, she expects the number to shrink to 28.
Graduation rates have also slightly increased, and the district has expanded literacy programs to all grade levels.
“There’s tremendous gain, but nobody is talking about that,” Adams said.
Plan to help campuses
Adams also noted that the struggling schools account for a small portion — about 5 percent — of all Houston ISD schools.
Trustees in June approved funding for Superintendent Richard Carranza’s ambitious campus turnaround plan, Achieve 180, that will target 32 campuses, including the 13 traditional district campuses where poor student academic performance could trigger state takeover. The Achieve 180 plan focuses on making improvements in six areas: school leadership, teaching, instruction, school design, social supports for students, and relationships with families and communities. Carranza, who came to Houston ISD a year ago from San Francisco, said a similar program there had positive results.
The $24 million plan, which was pared down in budget negotiations, will go into effect when schools begin in August.
Cynthia Wilson, chief of staff with HISD, said the initiative will focus even more energy on the 10 schools that the district has identified as most atrisk of triggering state action.
“Not only do we have our districtwide plan, but we’re also looking at this time to ramp up our efforts in these schools,” Wilson said.
Lawmaker not satisfied
The efforts to date, however, weren’t enough for legislators who supported the law in 2015.
Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., a Houston Democrat and chief architect of the law, has said the repeated failures of Houston’s Kashmere High School — which has received seven straight “improvement required” ratings — inspired his bill.
Of the 15 schools at risk of triggering the new law, all of them failed in 2016 to meet the state’s standards for student achievement and closing academic gaps among traditionally lowperforming demographics.
State education officials have declined to comment on how they will approach Houston ISD and the new state law.