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Can you tell your story at the next HISD Board meeting on Thursday? Or can you tell the story of an oppressed teacher who is being denied their free speech rights?

Teachers and parents are uniting together in large numbers. Our voice—our unity— is our power.

It is no coincidence that the superintendent scheduled after-school faculty meetings on Thursdays, the same day as the public board meetings, denying hard-working teachers the right to express their concerns.

If you are telling your own story or someone else’s story,  sign up by noon on WednesdayClick here for step-by-step instructions to sign up to speak. For help signing up, join our Tuesday 8 pm zoom training from 8-8:30 pm.  Read this to learn how to speak on behalf of a teacher who has been denied their free speech rights. RSVP at houstoncvpe.org/events

Read more on the 10/5 board agenda for Thursday’s HISD agenda review. Here is the more detailed agenda packet.  Here are three things on the agenda.

  • The principal evaluation proposal is like a badly designed Rube Goldberg machine. It’s agenda item 3 on p 8-41 of the agenda packet.) Stay tuned for a summary in our next email.
  • Speak about denial of Sp Ed services or about the horrible curriculum or about your child's teacher. Use agenda item 10: approval of minutes from previous meetings as a catch-all.
  • Speak about the disregard for the people's money and the mean-spirited way in which the money never makes it to the schools. It's agenda item 6: budget amendment.

Some teachers have been terminated or re-assigned just because they asked a question at a faculty meeting or because they spoke publicly about matters of public concern about the state takeover. Too much is at stake. Teachers, students, and parents cannot be silenced.

When we unite, we cannot be divided!

Teachers do not teach in an empty room. They teach real-life children. Real-life children have questions. Real-life children include students with disabilities. Real-life children include students who need extensions and deeper meaning, not more worksheets to fill in silently, several times per day each time they pass the daily test. 

We know that it is wrong to turn libraries into Zoom discipline centers. It is wrong to offload a scripted, thrown-together "curriculum" and daily tests in every subject on the backs of young children.  

Teachers and children are not robots.  

HoustonCVPE

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Working Together to Strengthen Houston's Public School System