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Miles has created a culture of fear in Houston just like he did in Dallas. There are two ways to stand up for Houston schoolchildren this Thursday!

Miles has targeted low-income communities of color for the most egregious of his harmful "reforms." Schoolchildren in all communities deserve skilled teachers, fully functional libraries and other supports, the right to read books during the school day, and the right to become prepared for college, career and life.

Tell Governor Abbott to return local control to Houston. Save our Schools.

Can you free up your schedule on Thursday?

• Protest at 11 am on Thursday outside the Marriot Marquis State of the District Luncheon. Bring signs and family members. Consider taking the train or carpooling.
• Speak at the board meeting on Thursday, either in person or by Zoom. You can sign up anytime until Wednesday at noon.

Speakers to agenda items start at 5 pm. The hearing of community is later at 7 pm. Instructions are here. For help signing up, join CVPE at 8 pm tonight or Tuesday night. RSVP for Zoom link at houstoncvpe.org/events.  More details in the Houston Chronicle here.

The agenda packet is here. Speakers are called in order of agenda item number. Even if you sign up for multiple agenda items, your maximum time to speak is 1 minute when there are 30 or more speakers.
Here are a couple of agenda items. 

• Agenda item 1: Growth Progress Measures: Miles will be using his cherry-picked data to describe his false narrative about NES. Our children are more than a test score.
• Agenda item 3: March Budget Amendment: Talk about this item if you have concerns about what he spends money on. How is Miles robbing Peter to pay Paul? More later.
• Agenda item 8: Termination of Employment: Resignation, First Reading should you want to discuss Miles’ salary schedules based on test scores and his priorities that so negatively impact children
• Agenda item 9: Curriculum Design for dyslexia services. It is important to test students for dyslexia so they can be supported. Why then would Miles be dismantling the dyslexia services department and requiring non NES schools to pay for their own dyslexia specialist out of their own budget next year?
• Agenda item 11: Freedom from Bullying: This is a good policy. Should we ask the superintendent to stop threatening students who speak at board meetings?
• Agenda item 12: Teach for America contract expanded to 200 TFA at a cost of an extra $5000 per TFA
• Agenda item 13: Approval of vendor awards over $1M. Vendor awards under $1M can be approved with zero public or board oversight ever since Miles with the Governor’s support amended the board policy last summer.
• Agenda item 25: Approval of minutes from previous board meetings. This is a catch all for any of the items you might want to speak about.
• Closed Session: Deliberate the duties of the superintendent of schools and others
• Closed Session: Consider and approve proposed appointments, reassignments, proposed terminations, of principals, teachers, etc.  
• Closed Session: Discuss and receive legal advice regarding Leader Effectiveness and Development System (LEADS) principal evaluation. This is the principal evaluation system Miles invented.
• Hearing of the Community: This is a later item. If possible, speak to one of the agenda items.