Triggered by the underperformance of Wheatley High School, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) will take over the Houston Independent School District (HISD). A Texas law passed in 2015 requires the state to take over a school district if even one of its campuses receives failing grades from the Texas Education Agency for five consecutive years; the said grades are based on the results of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exams.
However, there is discontent over the lack of transparency, given that TEA commissioner Mike Morath, who has sole authority over the Texas takeover of the school district, has yet to attend a public meeting in Houston since the announcement of the takeover. Morath, who has sole authority to appoint a new superintendent and board of managers, has declined to meet with teachers, parents, and local NAACP leaders.
"Since the commissioner believes his decision is right, then be transparent about it," Bishop James Dixon, the president of the Houston NAACP, said. "Have that conversation, and the fact that he's not having that conversation is making more and more people feel like there are things to hide."
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"Perhaps this is an indication of how the board of managers would work with the superintendent that they choose and hire," Bishop Dixon said. "This is why democracy is important. We select board members so that we can have public discourse and conversation."
The day after applications for new board of directors were due, several teachers and students held a walkout in several schools across the district on Thursday.
Worthing Freshman Micah Gabay has been involved in several community events opposing the TEA takeover. She fears that it will push students into charter and private schools, leaving students who cannot afford those options without needed resources.
In Austin, legislators are divided over the creation of education savings accounts, which would give families who opt out of the public school system up to $8,000 to be spent on private education. Gabay said that is still not enough money for many students to be able to afford private education,
“They’re going to give us money, but we can only use that money for private schools. They're not going to give us enough money to go to private school, so we’ll have to come up with the rest of the money ourselves," she said. "But a lot of the kids can’t afford that.”
Other students at Worthing complained that TEA was too disconnected from their school and community to best serve their needs.
Many are suspecting the political motives behind the takeover, especially given the Texas legislature’s penchant for anti-CRT, anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Civil rights groups have hoped that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will investigate the takeover.
“I am protesting the hostile takeover of Houston ISD to empower other parents to fight for their rights and for the rights of our children,” parent Kourtney Revels said. “Education is a right, not a privilege, and taxpayers like me would like to see more equity, school funding tied to enrollment and inflation, and the end to using STAAR to shame our communities, instead of hijacking the largest ISD by the state for political reasons.”
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Another student, sophomore Eliut Delgado, said the takeover will strip Houstonians of their right to democratically elect a board to guide the district and replace it with individuals picked by the state’s Republican leaders.
“My immediate concern is that we become a vessel for different policies — experimental ... whether it be book bannings or anti-LGBTQ,” Delgado said. “We have no idea what the effects are.”
That hasn’t sat well with Abbott, who’s been in a yearslong race with other Republican governors in exerting new authority over the public school system in the name of parental rights.
Amid the GOP race to ban critical race theory – the esoteric, graduate-level academic inquiry that has become an umbrella term for teaching history that emphasizes institutional inequity – Aboott was one of the first governors to sign a law that details how teachers can talk about current events and America’s history of racism in the classroom. Later, he was one of the first to sign a law that bars transgender girls from competing in school sports.
He’s pushed school districts to pull books from their shelves that center on LGBTQ issues and pledged to give parents even more rights when it comes to their children’s education – even though a “Parents Rights and Responsibilities” code is already enshrined in state law and gives parents significant control over their child’s education. Most recently, he threw his support behind a bill that would establish education savings accounts to help families who opt out of public school afford tuition at private schools and other education expenses.
“Many dots are connected to this action – critical race theory, DEI, controlling the content of classrooms as it relates to cultural education. All of this is connected,” Dixon says. “I think the public has not yet understood how massive the design is in the war against minority culture and especially African Americans and Latinos. I don't think we understand how intricate the playbook is that’s being worked on by these operatives.”
But many conservatives have no qualms cheering on the takeover.