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The exit criteria for ending the HISD state takeover are more stringent than the original criteria for initiating it, making it abundantly clear that the outcome was rigged from the beginning.

While the Texas Legislature drafts laws such as HB 1842 and SB 1365, it's the state regulatory agencies like the Texas Education Agency (TEA) that interpret them. TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, appointed by Governor Abbott, holds the authority to modify the criteria for ending takeovers at will. This appears to be how TEA is ending the takeover of Marlin ISD, a small district near Waco with 880 students.

The TEA takeover of HISD is a failed experiment and the TEA should end it now. Our kids can’t wait.

Your voice is essential to bringing important stories to the public, the press, and the national stage.

Speak this Thursday, June 27th at 4 pm at the HISD Board of managers Special Meeting. Instructions to sign up are here. You can also complete this form in English or en espanol, sign it and email it to [email protected] by Wednesday at noon. For help signing up, join CVPE at 8 pm tonight. RSVP for Zoom link at houstoncvpe.org/events.  

The agenda packet is here. Sign up to speak about any of the following agenda items. 

• Choose Agenda Item 1: Acceptance of Board Monitoring Update: Progress measures to address how Mike Miles is manipulating data at the expense of meaningful learning for our kids. Expose Miles’ hypocrisy in setting meager 1% increase goals for 2024, enabling him to claim success. Additionally, address how the relentless emphasis on high-stakes testing worsens inequalities and is part of a deliberate effort to undermine public education.
• Choose Agenda Item 2: Acceptance Of Board Monitoring Update: Constraint 3: The superintendent shall not make significant changes to programming or school options without conducting and communicating a research-based analysis of the effectiveness...” It seems Orwellian for the board of managers and Miles to say this with a straight face when the entire year has been about dismantling things based solely on the superintendent's whim and fancy.
• Choose Agenda Item 3: Community Engagement Committee Report. The committee will present a report on what HISD senior board award winners said about HISD. It is ironic the programs students cited as positive- college access coordinators, access to library books, the Emerge program- have ALL been gutted. You can also address the disingenuous manner in which Miles and the board of managers solicit feedback from the public. There is a reason for the ballot box!
• Choose closed session personnel a: "deliberate the duties of the superintendent of schools, all admin, employees, board of managers"… to speak about the bond, selling off of property, or anything else.

Last week, parents and teachers addressed City Council about the serious harm Mike Miles is causing to schoolchildren, educators, families, and the City of Houston. Ask one of them to speak at the board meeting on Thursday.

While the City Council has very limited legal authority to fight the takeover, their voice can amplify opposition to the takeover and hasten return to local control.

You can watch last week’s meeting here. Here is one excerpt from Sarah Terrell, an HISD grandparent and auditor.

"From minimal board discussions, we know Miles plans to sell off  33 parcels of real estate.  When I requested the list, HISD told me there was no list… although it seemed from board discussions that Ric Campo, the real estate developer on the board, knows the details.

"HISD’s properties are often large and close-in, in gentrifying areas—unique and highly desirable.   Some we’ve owned for over a hundred years.  Take HSPVA, on a downtown block near Discovery Green. As far back as 1886, the block that is now HSPVA housed the Houston Normal School, which later became Central High, and then Sam Houston High School. It was HISD headquarters until 1970. For the next fifty years HISD held onto it as a parking lot.  

"WE held onto that land, and now have a flagship school there. These valuable tracts are OUR family jewels. Read more here.