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2023-03-16 -Land of the Free
Texas announces takeover of Houston schools
[Yahoo] Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston's nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political.

The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's education commissioner, Mike Morath, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S. It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas' largest city, where Democrats wield control, and state Republican leaders, who have sought increased authority following election fumbles and COVID-19 restrictions.

The takeover is the latest example of Republican and predominately white state officials pushing to take control of actions in heavily minority and Democratic-led cities. They include St. Louis and Jackson, Mississippi, where the Legislature is pushing to take over the water system and for an expanded role for state police and appointed judges.

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In a letter to the Houston Independent School District, Morath said the Texas Education Agency will replace Superintendent Millard House II and the district's elected board of trustees with a new superintendent and an appointed board of managers made of residents from within the district's boundaries.

Morath said the board has failed to improve student outcomes while conducting “chaotic board meetings marred by infighting" and violating open meetings act and procurement laws. He accused the district of failing to provide proper special education services and of violating state and federal laws with its approach to supporting students with disabilities.

He cited the seven-year record of poor academic performance at one of the district's roughly 50 high schools, Wheatley High, as well as the poor performance of several other campuses.

"The governing body of a school system bears ultimate responsibility for the outcomes of all students. While the current Board of Trustees has made progress, systemic problems in Houston ISD continue to impact district students," Morath wrote in his six-page letter.

Most of Houston’s school board members have been replaced since the state began making moves toward a takeover in 2019. House became superintendent in 2021.

He and the current school board will remain until the new board of managers is chosen sometime after June 1. The new board of managers will be appointed for at least two years.

House in a statement pointed to strides made across the district, saying the announcement “does not discount the gains we have made.”

He said his focus now will be on ensuring “a smooth transition without disruption to our core mission of providing an exceptional educational experience for all students.”

The Texas State Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas condemned the takeover. At a news conference in Austin, state Democratic leaders called for the Legislature to increase funding for education and raise teacher pay.

“We acknowledge that there’s been underperformance in the past, mainly due to that severe underfunding in our public schools,” state Rep. Armando Walle, who represents parts of north Houston, said.

An annual Census Bureau survey of public school funding showed Texas spent $10,342 per pupil in the 2020 fiscal year, more than $3,000 less than the national average, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston.

The state was able to take over the district under a change in state law that Houston Democratic state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. proposed in 2015. In an op-ed piece in on Monday, Dutton said he has no regrets about what he did.

“We’re hearing voices of opposition, people who say that HISD shouldn’t have to face consequences for allowing a campus to fail for more than five consecutive years. Those critics’ concern is misplaced,” Dutton wrote.

Schools in other big cities, including , and Detroit, in recent decades have gone through state takeovers, which are generally viewed as last resorts for underperforming schools and are often met with community backlash. Critics argue that state interventions generally have not led to big improvements.

Texas started moving to take over the district following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and chronically low academic scores at Wheatley High.

The district sued to block a takeover, but new education laws subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and a January ruling from the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to seize control.

“All of us Texans have an obligation and should come together to reinvent HISD in a way that will ensure that we’re going to be providing the best quality education for those kids,” Abbott said Wednesday.

Schools in Houston are not under mayoral control, unlike in New York and Chicago, but as expectations of a takeover mounted, the city's Democratic leaders unified in opposition.

Race is also an issue because the overwhelming majority of students in Houston schools are Hispanic or Black. Domingo Morel, a professor of political science and public services at New York University, said the political and racial dynamics in the Houston case are similar to instances where states have intervened elsewhere.

“If we just focus on taking over school districts because they underperform, we would have a lot more takeovers,” Morel said. “But that's not what happens."
Posted by Skidmark 2023-03-16 00:00|| || Front Page|| [26 views ]  Top

#1 Houston area’s feral hogs exploding in numbers, creating a constant struggle for residents
Posted by Skidmark 2023-03-16 00:52||   2023-03-16 00:52|| Front Page Top

#2 Corrupt and incompetent is no way to go through life, son.
Posted by Fleter Crasing2148 2023-03-16 03:39||   2023-03-16 03:39|| Front Page Top

#3 The apologists for the status quo:

"Mistakes were made, but comon, man..."
Posted by M. Murcek 2023-03-16 08:34||   2023-03-16 08:34|| Front Page Top

#4 Critics argue that state interventions generally have not led to big improvements.

Mostly due to foot-dragging and sabotage by the Teachers, their Unions, and Democrat Politicians?
Posted by Frank G 2023-03-16 09:47||   2023-03-16 09:47|| Front Page Top

#5 Some school board rep said on the news last night, "They didn't even talk to the parents!"

Not even 100,000 of 'em.
Posted by Bobby 2023-03-16 11:04||   2023-03-16 11:04|| Front Page Top

#6 Leftism, CRT, "Wokeness," and drag queens in schools must have tested the public's limits.
Posted by JohnQC 2023-03-16 11:41||   2023-03-16 11:41|| Front Page Top

#7 If you do nothing, they complain that you don’t care. If you do something, they complain that you are heavy handed racists. Certainly, there are majority white schools that also underperform. Generally, those failures occur in smaller communities in the hinterlands and are not on the same scale. Hopefully, they have a better plan than the Bush Administration did for Iraq.
Posted by Super Hose 2023-03-16 12:29||   2023-03-16 12:29|| Front Page Top

#8 The district has to be really bad to be taken over by the state. I suspect they failed to meet mutually agreed to criteria several times prior to takeover.
Posted by Itsoktobewhite 2023-03-16 12:47||   2023-03-16 12:47|| Front Page Top

#9 This is about twenty years too late to do any good.
Posted by ed in texas 2023-03-16 13:50||   2023-03-16 13:50|| Front Page Top

#10 You can pitch it as Repubs vs Dems, but this is not a new problem. A couple decades back, a buddy picked up his family and moved from Houston to Pearland, just south of the city, to get away from the Houston Independent School District. I doubt he was the only one.
Posted by SteveS 2023-03-16 18:05||   2023-03-16 18:05|| Front Page Top

#11 The only solution is the one Paps Mundi came up with: the fathers get inolved and coach these boys - usually throught sports. But dads have been exorcised from society and that the moms have been shown to be "lacking" in the area of masculinity. It's almost like this was the plan.
Posted by Rex Mundi 2023-03-16 19:33||   2023-03-16 19:33|| Front Page Top

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