The latest bad idea coming from Miles is to close magnet and CTE programs at almost every high school within a thirty-minute drive from Barbara Jordan Career Center.
What began as a plan targeting Kashmere, Northside, and Heights has now expanded to Furr, Mickey Leland, North Forest, Sam Houston, and Waltrip High Schools. Many of these campuses, already gutted after becoming NES, lost fine arts, clubs, tutoring, and staff and are now being asked to give up even more in the name of “progress,” as defined by “Commander” Mike Miles.
Can you do three simple things?
- First, keep standing up for students and teachers against Miles’ bad ideas.
- Second, put HISD’s Jan 6-8th sham information sessions on your calendar and commit to showing up.
- And third, start writing emails now to the board of managers to tell them to vote no.
This proposal eliminates magnet and career pathways, programs like web development, graphic design, entrepreneurship, and culinary. These are career-building courses, dual-credit opportunities, and enrollment anchors. Removing them further destabilizes schools already under the gun.
This is not just disruptive; it is wasteful. Voters approved bond dollars in the last bond to build two fully outfitted culinary kitchens for a program students love and that prepares them for careers, and now Miles’ plan would leave them underutilized.
The plan isn’t about helping students; it’s to inflate enrollment at Barbara Jordan so Miles can claim it’s “bursting at the seams” and justify more CTE centers. In November, “Mike Miles announced plans to borrow $180 million for a new center, up from an original $130 million price tag in last year’s failed bond, using lease-revenue bonds that bypass voter approval — unlike the $4.4 billion bond HISD voters rejected in 2024.”
The claim that these programs don’t align with future labor markets is also contrived. Many other HISD high schools offer the graphic design career pathway. Yet the only schools losing programs are those closest to Barbara Jordan.
In Miles’ worldview, kids are widgets to be moved around to serve his narrative. But we know the truth: kids lose, taxpayers lose, and schools lose. And when magnets are gutted and enrollment drops, we all know what comes next: “consolidation”, Miles’ newest spin for school closures.
Trustee-elect former longtime principal Michael McDonough explained it well at last week’s board meeting. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Routing students to Barbara Jordan may sound good, yet but the other side of that equation is lost time, lost classes, and lost choices. Under this plan, many will have to leave their home campus and give up an entire class period for travel. That one lost period is a lost opportunity. A student who wants to study Automotive Technology, aspires to take AP Calculus, and hopes to play volleyball, cannot do all three if travel takes a slot. Their choices disappear before high school even begins.”
“If a proposal strips away advanced coursework, limits choice, and narrows who kids can become, it is the wrong proposal.”
Oppose this plan. Show up January 5–8.
Write your elected officials. Send individual messages or your email will be routed away from their inboxes. And while you’re at it, send them samples of Miles’ error-ridden AI curriculum and remind them that some schools still don’t offer at least 30 minutes of daily recess as required by law.
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