If TEA can’t run a meeting, how can it run HISD?
These sessions are just the start of years of life under state takeover.
It didn’t take long for things to get loud at TEA’s first public meeting since announcing its takeover of the largest school district in the state.
The audience inside the crowded auditorium at Westbury High School made its frustrations heard.
At first just a couple of people stood, shouting for a chance to ask questions. Periodic chants broke out, inspiring more people to rise to their feet, cheering in favor.
Others would chime in and urge people to quiet down so they could get through the slideshow and onto to the questions.
But they didn’t let up on the TEA representative stationed at the front of the room. “Next slide,” one woman shouted when he seemed to move too slowly through the presentation.
The meeting seemed to confirm any bias one might have.
If you believe TEA is carrying out a hostile takeover with no genuine community involvement, the agency did not help its case Tuesday night.
If you believe Houston is a chaotic, unruly place that needs the strong hand of an appointed board, you saw that in the shouting.
The consensus seems to be it did not go well. If we had to grade it, we’d give it a D, though we also saw reason for hope.
About 15 minutes into the slideshow presentation, the crowd’s frustration boiled over at the southwest Houston campus.
Answer our questions. Pass the mic. For Teplah Toomey, whose daughter attends the Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy in HISD, it was frustrating.
Toomey came to learn how her daughter’s A-rated school might be affected and to see whether TEA was open to hearing how parents and students are really feeling.
To the first question, she got a rushed and incomplete answer.
“If a child’s school runs successfully, we don’t anticipate any impact,” Alejandro Delgado, deputy commissioner for the TEA, told the crowd.
To the second, on hearing how attendees felt, TEA failed.
Many walked into the first meeting expecting more of an open forum but Delgado and others with TEA made clear that they would be sticking to information and questions about the board of managers application, due April 6, and the selection process only.
The audience made clear that that wouldn’t cut it. Their insistence yielded some results but many answers were unsatisfying, with so much still TBD.
They wanted to know whether schools would be replaced with charters. “That is not our intent,” Delgado said.
They wanted to know how TEA would ensure the board of managers actually reflects the community. They will be required to live within HISD boundaries, Delgado said, adding that while it wasn’t stipulated by law, the agency felt it was important after community feedback in 2019.
They wanted to know how chronic underfunding would be addressed and how a school bus driver without an aide would be helped.
“Our expectation is that the new board of managers and the superintendent are going to be responsible for supporting that concern,” Delgado said.
Will TEA control the district from Austin?
“The TEA will not control the district from Austin,” Delgado said, promising “a community-driven school board.” It’s not that simple, though, and the crowd knew it.
After all, the board of managers will be appointed by the education commissioner, Mike Morath, who is in turn appointed by the governor.
“Where is Mike Morath?” the crowd shouted. No answer.
Delgado eventually yielded the microphone to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who echoed the frustration in the room and pointed to elements in the code she believed made the takeover illegitimate.
It was predictable that the meeting would be tense, which makes the lack of adequate preparation and good classroom management, if you will, all the more confounding.
While it’s appropriate that the most pressing questions about how the district will be run were deferred to the future board of managers, Delgado missed opportunities to acknowledge fears and listen.
Much of the information he did share about the application process for that board has already been widely reported online, worsening the impatience of parents, employees and other community members.
TEA’s response suggests a disrespectful disinterest in even being prepared for the types of questions they were going to get, for the concerns that the fix is in here.
One Westbury parent even told the editorial board she was considering pulling her student out of the district after seeing poor management from TEA Tuesday night.
If the agency can’t build enough trust with parents to keep their kids enrolled or for staff not to quit, how can the takeover succeed?
We also saw the crowd as something more than loud and disruptive.
Sure, some people may have come looking for a fight. But many were there for more, as engaged community members with in-depth knowledge of the district’s problems and how to serve our students.
From Tuesday’s crowd: Karla Mattox, with the union that represents school bus drivers, was the one who pointed to the lack of an aide on board and how it impacts children.
Pamela Boveland, a Yates High School graduate and longtime Third Ward resident, knows about how school closures hurt communities. She knows that more schools need therapeutic counselors on campus.
Our hope is that these sorts of people stay engaged at the least and perhaps join the 138 who have already applied for the board of managers job and that they have real control if appointed.
“All you can do is try to be part of the solution,” Savant Moore, a Wheatley High School and McReynolds Middle School parent in Fifth Ward, told the Chronicle Tuesday. He plans to do that by applying for the board.
We applaud that hope and commitment.
TEA needs to do more to bolster the trust and confidence of the community that this process will be transparent and fair and not just responsive but accountable.
That’s an uphill battle since the state both appoints the new board and determines when they relinquish control.
These initial meetings are just the start of what could be years of life under state takeover. Improvement required.