At the end of the day, the research is clear; school closures harm kids and rip the heart out of neighborhoods. Full stop.
On Thursday, F Mike Miles announced the closure of 12 Houston ISD schools, almost all in under-resourced Black and Brown communities. At the same Thursday meeting, the district cemented its plans to funnel SB 1882 funding into four magnet schools that largely serve more affluent families. HSPVA, Challenge Early College, HAIS and Energy Institute High School magnets.
The irony is unsettling at the least and classist at its worst. It is completely antithetical to the promise of public education
Since 2000, Houston ISD has shut down 78 schools, mostly between 2000 and 2014. Almost 90 percent of those closures were in majority Black and Brown neighborhoods, and 65 percent were in Black neighborhoods, even though Black students make up only about 23 percent of the district and roughly 22 to 25 percent of the Houston metro population. This is not random.
When schools close, students are less likely to graduate high school, less likely to go to college, and less likely to attain higher paying jobs. This is disruption by design, and it has repeatedly hit the most vulnerable communities the hardest.
Just look at the ABC13 map of proposed school closures. Lay the 2026 Houston poverty map over it and the pattern is unmistakable. Every proposed closure is in a low-income neighborhood. While school closures are harmful under any circumstances, Miles could have spread the impact across the district instead of concentrating it almost exclusively in poor communities. He chose not to.
Miles is the problem. He is responsible for steep enrollment declines and unsustainable spending, especially on costly vanity projects like HISD’s state-of-the-art news station, the rushed CTE changes, and SB 1882 partnerships. His decisions are turning this district into a financial time bomb, worse than what we see in other districts across the state.
The state owes Houston schoolchildren and taxpayers reimbursement for money diverted from classrooms to fund Miles’s unchecked spending.
Do you like this page?