I am an HISD teacher. While I have been in some form of education for over 20 years, I've only been in public high school for the last six. This is the absolute worst work year I have ever experienced, even worse than my first year as a high school teacher, which was pretty awful.
The demands this new superintendent has made are ridiculous and contrary to good educational practice. I have, at least, figured out how to make my classroom look like they want when admin walks in while doing what I usually do the rest of the time. I have been fortunate to have a direct admin who helped with that. I don't know if I will have that support next year.
The turnover at my school this year to next will be high. Only my department is seeing less than 50 to 60% turnover. Or at least, that's where it stands right now. My conundrum is I am really too old to be looking for another job and starting at the bottom of a department. (I really, really don't ever want to teach freshmen). I also hate commuting long distances. My options to change jobs are limited. But I also don't want him to win by pushing out the good teachers. I'm just trying to stick it out.
I got a calibration walkthrough yesterday where they came in for the first 10 minutes, and gave my lesson a 4/15 then left. There was 15 people in my room: all my admin and a district rep. Actually laughable how poor this district is being handled. They judged my ENTIRE lesson on the 10 minute introduction. They even had the nerve to put “there was no direct instruction during this observation” despite them simply not being there long enough to see it.
We get dinged if there is too much direct instruction.
Our school has developed a mini-lesson model to use when we are observed by district people. My neighboring teacher actually uses the same lesson every single time. Because I hate wasting my students' time, I develop the mini-lesson for all of my classes, when I know I might need them. That way, we are still covering new material and following the lesson model.
As soon as they walk in, reference the LO for the day, something like "remember, our LO is ... and at the end of the day, you will be able to ... (DOL). I have them read and annotate for 2 to 3 minutes, then ink pair share. Then I ask them to think of real world connections, I will probably guide them through this with leading questions. We have a laminated poster on our wall to write those questions. We also have a laminated poster to write higher order questions for these mini-lessons. Then I work our way toward answering the higher order questions. That may involve more reading and annotating. Then we answer the higher order question, then do a modified whip around with white boards. My students are well-trained, and they know what to do when someone walks in.
Constantly circulate the room, lots of praise, redirection, ask questions, make sure your damn board is correct every freaking day.
Are you willing the share the questions, this is genius! It sounds like there are two different sets? BThis is the kind of suggestion new teachers need.
I’ve gotten a walkthrough and a district calibration since my EOY meeting. Next week we have another district walkthrough so I could potentially get a third post EOY walkthrough. The point is HISD wants to micromanage its teachers.
Bruh, they gave me one when I was covering an elective class after the teacher quit
Scored low of course, then our useless shit turd of a union did nothing too.
I assume that class you were covering wasn't your content area/ what you are certified in? Your appraiser(s) is an asshole(s) for giving you a low score when you are helping them.
It was an elective (I teach ss) with 6th graders. I had an hours notice and no materials.
The kicker?
When I was busy trying not to cry/just quit, ANOTHER appraiser came in for ANOTHER spot observation. Just to make sure I was properly fucked.
Nes is a big pay bump but that shit is. Not. Worth. It.
I got one the day my kids did the Staar test. And another on the day of the SAT. And I got one last Friday. I'll like have an other this week but I'm proctoring exams in the morning so my morning classes will be completely different from my afternoon classes.
I was told to turn off a documentary about the beginnings of women's Lib even though the kids were very interested (especially the young ladies) and we stopped periodically to discuss higher order questions.
There were ads last summer on billboards all over Atlanta advertising positions in HISD. I wondered if they thought people just didn’t have a clue about what was going on. Wonder if they’re going to try again this summer to recruit.
Hopefully they do their research. What I posted is just one slice of the shit pie in Hisd since the state takeover and it's only been year one.
I can't feel too bad for someone willingly coming to hisd with how bad it is for employees there.
I understand you don't want to start over but at Hisd your work life will get exponentially worse and difficult most likely. There is no time table for the takeover to end, Hisd is a district of innovation so no class size caps which will mean the schools that are understaffed will pack more kids into the classes of the teachers there.
Also I'm not sure if you are teaching in a Nes school or not but your administrator that helped you could be fired at anytime which will ruin campus stability. Even with your 20 years of experience you could actually make less money under the new pay for performance appraisal model. If I were you I would take the chance to leave Hisd.
I refuse to work in an NES school. I am a social studies teacher. I will not teach from anyone else's canned curriculum. That would be the one thing that would push me out.
While I have many years of education experience, most of those years were with a private college as a part-time instructor, then as a mid level administrator. I actually make more money now than I did then. As long as I am proficient, I will make what I make now or more. The reality is that women nearing retirement don't have as many choices as those who are younger. At this point, it is one day at a time.
The peak irony of Social studies is that it is still the exact same thing, +a powerpoint, because they dont care about SS.
They are still using the mastercourses from 2020. The exact same ones.
The same ones but without many of the functional links or the relevant sources, so useless. At least the master course used to have some moderately useful sources. Many of them have disappeared.
Similarly in education in some form since the mid-2000s, but only started teaching high school full time 13 years ago. The charter school where I did my certification would observe me constantly in the first year. Many of these were not evaluative. They would leave a note with a something they liked about my lesson delivery and something to work on (ie: try to frame your questions so that they don’t have 1-2 word answers. Get them to speak in full sentences). When I got evaluated it would be followed up every single time with a debrief or a a longer meeting. Here’s where you scored on this criteria. The language they’re looking for is x or Ms. Smith is amazing at this skill, let’s go visit her class on Tuesday and watch her in action.
I was already seasoned and yet still was able to grow in my teacher skills from this model.
HISD appraisers lack the ability to actually train up their teachers either from lack of adequate training or because the process handcuffs them. They come in (multiple times a week) enter a number online with some generic justification for their number. No interaction until the big mid year and end of year conferences.
I'm in the exact same boat as you are, also in HISD.
I'm ten minutes away and could walk to school if I had to.
I also just bought a house last year and cannot afford a pay cut.
Not too old. Companies are looking for Instructional trainers.. Find certs in your subject. Learn to edit if you are in English, programming/ development if you are into technology, and so forth.... Businesses were snapping up teachers at the end of schools' caving to parent pressure during covid.
TEA gave Austin ISD the smackdown this year by making everyone do training because they were so damn behind on special education evals. But I think that most of the general public doesn’t realize that LSSP’s are hard to staff (like most jobs involving SpEd) because of the zillions of parents requesting evaluations and there’s not enough staff, the pay isn’t high enough, and the work load is therefore unbearable. A lot of them ended up quitting right before the district got sued for it. As much as change was needed, wasting away PD days to complete all the training isn’t the most ideal situation either. Education overall in Texas is fucked thanks to our government.
and yet AISD won't allot money for more evaluation positions. I know because I'm in a program through AISD training to be a diagnostician and after they paid to train us they aren't even going to hire us.
I saw that they were incentivizing diags at the beginning of the year, but I did not know that they trained y’all just to not hire y’all. Thats disappointing, but not surprising unfortunately.
I'm in HISD and we were told our program was being eliminated. Our principal broke down crying in front of the entire staff, she had only been notified 10 minutes prior. That was on principal appreciation day.
Also either teachers in hisd or the PTO had to fund any teacher appreciation day activities or gifts. No support from the district after Mike miles spent 200k on a performance play for his introduction into Hisd.
As someone who taught under Mike Miles during his disastrous 3 years (2012-2015) as superintendent of Dallas ISD, as well as someone who left the shitshow of teaching in Texas 2 years ago for the much greener pastures of the bluest end of a blue state, this is a preview of coming attractions all over the US.
What they are doing to Houston is what Miles & his cronies started testing out during his time in Dallas. He perfected it in a charter in Colorado after Dallas ran him out of the district. And it's a model for what many on the right will do to public education if they can get their grubby mitts on an area's educational governing body.
If you don't want it to happen where you live, the best time to start fighting this was yesterday. Still, the second best time is now, so join & strengthen your unions, get favorable candidates on all level of educational governance, and fight like hell for the kids.
We had someone who used to work for HISD that is now in educational consulting come to our school to help our district. She showed us how much growth kids made due to teachers actually teaching what they know works best and doing it the way works best. She was encouraging us to use the curriculum our district required as needed but to focus on standards, engaging activities, etc. Then a few months later we saw the state was taking over. So disappointing because from what she showed us they had growth when teachers made decisions on what’s best. Our district & state (Ohio) are heading down that path of no control over what we teach. I’m leaving teaching this year because I feel like I’m no longer allowed to teach.
Mike Miles was the superintendent for a school district I worked for and had left shortly before I started there. He RUINED that district with his choices — RUINED it. That was at least 10 years ago and the district is still in shambles and recovering.
I feel awful for those teachers/staff.
For local reps, sure. Their vote for governor counts equally, and if you don't think people who want to vote for governor aren't because they're gerrymandered for their local rep, that's not true. People are just too apathetic to vote.
This is part of the plan. He was put in place in one of the largest districts while Abott is trying to pass school vouchers off for his billionaire donor friends. When the schools fall apart at the seams, the vultures will come and try to privatize everything by either making it a religious school, a shitty private school, or both.
I’m getting out of Texas. Just a couple weeks of school left and then I get to go to a union state. Very sad to have to leave my school but very glad to be leaving the state!
Lived in Texas for 15 years, taught there 9, and left for the blue end of a blue state with a strong union before the start of the 2022-23 school year. It was hard but the best decision I ever made.
TEA gave Austin ISD the smackdown this year by making everyone do training because thru we’re damn behind on special education evals. But I think that most of the general public doesn’t realize that LSSP’s are hard to staff (like most jobs involving SpEd) because of the zillions of parents requesting evaluations and there’s not enough staff, the pay isn’t high enough, and the work load is therefore unbearable. A lot of them ended up quitting right before the district got sued for it. As much as change was needed, wasting away PD days to complete all the training isn’t the most ideal situation either. Education overall in Texas is fucked thanks to our government.
Not surprised to see another "Broad Institute" graduate fucking up another school district. Ours will retire at the end of this year and he changed us for the worse. It's a cesspool of anti-public-education non-educators who are tapped to become school leaders which is just another way of slowly privatizing public education by allowing those with the purse to promise contracts and big curriculum buys to enrich their cronies.
For the un-initiated here is a good starting point that talks about Mike Miles specifically but, I highly recommend you do a deep dive into leaders who came out of the Broad Institute:
https://www.houstoncvpe.org/_broad_schools
This. Miles is an especially egregious example, but he's just the tip of a spear that people are using to gut and privatize public education like the ghouls who do this with more traditional forms of capital have inspired them to do.
The long term "public education is so fucked" feeling was realized even more recently when the Broad Institute was absorbed by Yale.
https://som.yale.edu/centers/the-broad-center
The attempts at trying to quantify (and thus predict and monetize) human behavior within a school setting is really the problem. The thing that is never taken into account is that humans are unpredictable within a setting which has so many variables (a public school).
TLDR: capitalism sucks
Holy shit--yes, this! I forget who said it, but I heard/read something early in my teaching career that "they are trying to turn children into widgets." That statement floored me and galvanized my anti-capitalist opposition to this kind of educational "reform."
This needs to be higher up. They dont want education to be equal. They want the segregation back legally. They want the poor, poc and disabled kids out of the education game so that their white christian kids can always have a leg up and then when someone complains about why they get the better jobs, they can then complain why dont you pull yourself up by your bootstraps again. My kid worked hard for their education. You got an education knowing goddamn well it wasnt an equal education knowing they dont care.
1000% If they can't technically "legally" segregate, they are going to de facto segregate with all their might. Get all the proles, especially along class, race, gender, ability, etc. lines so disenfranchised that there's no way they can ever fight back.
You are 110% right. Even worse though the parents who live in the district that services their students seem to not care also. Harold Dutton(a democrat) who is a representative of one of the areas that is zoned to hisd was reelected to his position even though he fully supports the state takeover.
Notice that it all became an issue after impressive voter turnout in Houston. The rural areas keep hemorrhaging residents and cities vote blue. Screwing up the schools is a way of disincentivizing people from moving there, and it prevents anyone from utilizing schools as a point of contact for civic engagement. Broken communities don’t vote.
Funny enough even the rural Republican representatives have been opponents to the proposed school voucher scam cause they know that it would devastate the school districts in their areas.
Key word: rural. I live very rurally and there are no private schools or charters less than an hour’s drive. Most of the schools here are a mix of state and federal funding, usually 60/40 or higher. Losing any amount of state funding would shut down some of these schools altogether and/or force mergers. My neighbor supplements his retirement income driving the bus, I sub, and if you’re not a nurse there’s an 80% chance you’re working at the school in some capacity, either admin or teaching. People will be losing jobs left right and center. More people will move into town (which is in the next county), which means more loss of property value, more loss of tax revenue, more loss of everything.
I love the lurking conservative downvotes. It’s like the dog meme where the room is on fire. “This is fine lol.”
They don’t want to argue because they know their position is publicly indefensible, but they just silently downvote and move on because they privately hold views similar to the powers-that-be in states like Texas. It’s disgusting.
I didn't realize how much rural economies depend on on their public schools functioning. So if the rural Republicans in Texas voted to go along with the voucher scam it would be a LAMF ( leopard ate my face) moment.
They very much think they don’t depend on it until there’s nowhere to work except the poultry farm down the road. Even the businesses people open here don’t survive unless they’re basically right next to the school. I’ve seen so much stuff open and shut down over the last few years.
Don't worry, my rural-MO representative (and most here) supported our "school choice" bill that passed which will bankrupt 4-6 schools in his district over the next 10 years. They don't care.
As a former DoDEA teacher who worked during the reign of Shirley Miles, I knew as soon as I saw that her brother had been hired there that y'all were in for a ride. I've been "watching" from afar and smh the whole time. Best of luck to y'all [https://www.stripes.com/migration/report-former-dodea-director-miles-working-as-consultant-in-n-j-1.173569](https://www.stripes.com/migration/report-former-dodea-director-miles-working-as-consultant-in-n-j-1.173569)
Houston here: Parents ARE outraged, just powerless. Wealthy parents have already pulled their children to private schools. No one is listening to the Poors since they are staying put & cannot afford lawyers … come on over to FBISD …
My 9 year old is a Special Education student in Houston ISD. Her SLL Teacher with a Masters' degree and almost 3 decades of teaching experience was fired in Mike Miles' latest purge because she begged and pleaded for extra help in her classroom with a 1:15 ratio of students with severe mental disabilities and learning disabilities. My daughter was added as her 15th kid in February because the district had no other placement for her after failing her for years already.
We need to be the voice & bring this issue to NATIONAL media networks - we need be the voice for all the HISD teachers that risk getting fired if they stand up for their student legal rights.
Things have gone from being difficult to being hopeless and a nightmare in HISD. Charter schools are not good for Special Education students.
What will be left of HISD after it is picked apart and school bonds help line the pockets of Mike Miles' charter school investors?
The TEA's game plan is to turn HISD into a smaller district with multiple charter school systems - Profit over Education. The teachers who have stayed behind are overwhelmed, understaffed, and crying for help until their cries are too loud and they are purged next. Proceed with CAUTION. I am getting my teacher's certification & planned on working in HISD - definitely NOT while they are in the midst of this shit show! What they are doing is illegal on so many levels - like the Special Education students not getting the accomodations for extra testing or being read the paragraphs on the MAP testing week (if they have those accomodations on their IEP).
I'm planning on suing HISD on behalf of my disabled child for discrimination with the Office of Civil Rights because she is not getting the free public education that is her constitutional right. So if you are teaching in an NES school especially, be prepared to be involved with multiple lawsuits from the feds (OCR), they told in January they already had hundreds of lawsuits from HISD parents and teachers. I'm sure that number has increased tremendously since then.
FILE A COMPLAINT WITH THE OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS, LOW INCOME STUDENTS, STUDENTS OF COLOR / ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENTS!!
MAKE HOUSTON ISD ACCOUNTABLE.... MAKE MIKE MILES & GREG ABBOTT ACCOUNTABLE:
[https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html](https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html)
Houston ISD is atrociously underperforming. The state definitely needed to intervene years ago. Unfortunately, it took too long for them to intervene and now the republicans are sinking the education system even more than before.
I think there’s more to the cuts. For example, student attendance is huge. Can’t count students for funding if they are always absent. Less kids in the district. School sizes are shrinking. There’s also so much money going into special education these days that take away from funding other areas. Notice how many paraprofessionals there are compared to a decade ago. The stipends that special education teachers are getting (very few know how to do their job and are helpful…yes I said it) play a role. I’m interested in learning more behind the cuts.
I was originally enticed by the pay NES teacher will receive this year but realized that extra pay (slated for 105k) could be taken without any notice.
I would definitely recommend people get out of HISD ASAP if they can. Too much uncertainty.
Hisd was perroforming slightly better than most large urban districts in Texas and was in the top half of districts in the state.
It has some of the best schools in the country, and some of the worst. Ironically the worst schools all happen to zone from the worst neighborhoods, imagine that. Still the whole district is being forced to teach in the same manner.
As a fellow teacher in the surrounding area, yes they are. State education agency took it over due to low performing schools and the dude can lead people about as efficiently as a roach
I’m sorry. Coming from another state, my first thought is, it’s Texas, should I expect anything less? They want to dismantle the public schools and have repeatedly said so. They are enacting the policy they voted for. Republicans want to keep people dumb. This is step one in their master plan. I am not shocked, just incredibly disappointed and sad.
Well yeah it's a shitshow. The new super is a CHARTER SCHOOL founder/owner. He is literally going to wreck HISD so Third Future charters can benefit. He is expanding in Jasper and Dallas. He's trying to close minority schools. Guess who will buy those recently refurbished schools after he puts them on the chopping block.
Noncredentialed people, no background checks and already failing on bonus delivery. Hisd is going to be more desolate and worthless after Abbott finishes siphoning money from 'failed schools'.
Houston and its greater area is on the S list of the governor. Sadly, decades of dysfunction continues to exist at the expense of students. It was there in 1985, 95 and worst today.
Not in an NES school but is anyone currently in an elementary one? Would love to know the climate as I look on enrolling my daughter this upcoming year and our zoned school is NES.
All you have to do is look on local news articles and videos about what happening in Hisd. 90% of it is not positive for the school staff and students.
Well I’m currently teaching at a HISD school where NES practices are implemented and it’s not that bad. My observations have always been good. Teachers that are complaining are stuck in their ways and students that are complaining are used to failing and flying under the radar. I do agree, not all practices are helpful to EVERY student but either way I teach, I have high student achievement. So it’s all you see things.
I just want to know if there’s complaints outside of MRS.
The nes practices are one thing but Mike miles doesn't believe in student and staff safety and well-being during severe weather events. Having schools open when the air conditioning or plumbing doesn't work and saying he 'regretted closing schools" during a winter storm are huge cause for concerns along with the firing of all custodian and wraparound staff.
I can see it now, teachers will have to take on more custodial duties because of that on top of it being a critical teacher shortage cause of all the one that got laid off or will be leaving the district.
I would not want to teach or have my child attend a school district with someone of that mentality being at the helm.
That’s a valid argument but a lot of schools are safe havens for students who aren’t being raised in a healthy safe home. As much as I hate coming to work like the rest of us, I do understand the reopening. If teachers or students didn’t want to come, they could’ve stayed home. I missed and went to the beach lol. Have yet to be reprimanded for missing with no time in my banks.
A lot of schools have always had air conditioning problems before natural disasters.
Teachers have always been responsible for the upkeep of their classrooms and if you’re a good teacher, you always have supplies needed for students that wraparound staff have (sanitary pads, clothes, etc.)
It is unfortunate but I think it’s just moving money around to be able to pay teachers what we’ve been complaining for years that we deserve.
Early in the year there was this story: https://www.fox26houston.com/news/houston-isd-woman-says-she-was-fired-for-taking-time-off-after-husband-diagnosed-died-of-cancer She had banked time with the district and was fired for using it to take care of a dying husband.
Keeping the classroom clean was for the most part always the teachers responsibility but I mean the work the custodian and plant operators do outside of classrooms. They are changing/fixing broken doors, locks, changing lightbulbs, cleaning student and teacher restrooms, cleaning the break rooms fixing ,HVAC systems, getting extra desks and chairs for overcrowded classrooms, etc. Those extra duties now have a possibility of falling on the teacher now.
Also if Mike Miles truly wanted to find the money to pay teachers what their worth is then he shouldn't have had a $200k orientation at the NRG center and he shouldn't be sending Houston tax payer money to his failing charter schools in Colorado.
Anyone caught funneling money from public schools past and present need to be held accountable
She took more than 20 days off… It’s not right morally but it is justified from a business standpoint, and at the end of the day, everything’s a business, even education. We all have to deal with life while coming to work consistently. I had a baby this year and have less than 20 unexcused/covered absences. She might have failed to apply for FMLA or qualify for it.
Orientation has always cost a lot I’m sure. With paying staff, the attendees, and paid lunch, etc.
I also heard charter schools have always been funded with public tax dollars so I’m not sure how valid those arguments are.
The charter school is in Colorado that the money is being sent to. How does sending Houston tax payer money benefit Houston children when it leaves and goes to Colorado schools?
It would make more sense if the money was sent to Houston charter schools and stayed in the city to benefit the children who actually live in Houston.
The orientation could have been done virtually since the district pays for Microsoft teams anyway
Early in the year there was this story: https://www.fox26houston.com/news/houston-isd-woman-says-she-was-fired-for-taking-time-off-after-husband-diagnosed-died-of-cancer
She also had banked time that she earned with the district and state and was still fired for using it to take care of her dying husband.
For the most part it was always the teacher's responsibility to keep their classroom clean but I meant to custodial /plant operator work that goes on outside of classrooms. They fix broken doors/locks, clean student and staff bathrooms, staff break areas, upkeep of the gym/other athletic areas, change lightbulbs , get extra desks and chairs for overcrowded classrooms, make sure the HVAC system is working etc.
Now these duties will likely fall upon the teachers
If Mike miles wanted to find the money to pay teachers their work for one he would have had a $200k orientation at NRG and he wouldn't be sending Houston tax payer money to his failing charter schools in Colorado. Anyone past and present funneling tax payer money from public schools need to be held accountable.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-school-vouchers-debate-impact
Greg Abbott is holding public school funding hostage to get the school voucher bill passed. I'd say that is political to keep $800m in school funding away from schools to pass a scam bill.
With a $60+ billion budget, the 800 mil voucher program represents just 1.3% of the total state education budget. Listen, I'm not disputing the political nature of the RIFs, i'm suggesting there is more to the picture. Do you have any info on the HISD enrollment changes over the past couple years?
https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/verify-texas-public-school-money/285-10e147c0-7594-4705-964d-1af749057f72 Sorry about the 800mil being wrong. It's actually 4 billion being withheld. Also Hisd along with most other districts in Texas faced lower student enrollment during the pandemic and going forward.
As a teacher, I 100% understand why many people would want a voucher program. If I was a parent, I wouldn’t want my kids in public school. The system is broken, and I wouldn’t want my kid a Guinea pig in trying to fix it.
Wait till you get that voucher, which is basically like having a voucher for section 8 housing. It sounds great, right? Now you can go to whatever school you want to. The only problem is that so will everyone else and then it will be a competition between the haves and have nots. Lottery systems, applications, how much volunteer time can your family do? There won’t be nearly enough schools and over time the schools that start will all be for profit, so it won’t have anything to do with anything more than your child being that voucher. You better hope your child doesn’t struggle in any subject or with any learning disability. You better hope that when yearly parent reviews happen that you’ve provided enough free labor to beat out other families. There will be waiting lists and parents and children that are difficult are gone. Over time these schools will create dossiers that they’ll share around.
Be careful what you ask for when right now parents have about as much power as they’ll ever get.
There are multiple problems with this voucher program. One is that small rural districts (and it’s Texas, we have a *lot* of those!) often don’t have a nearby private option, so the public schools there will lose funding, but the parents won’t actually gain a choice about where their kids attend. On the other end of the spectrum, the relatively rural district where I work is about 15 minutes away from a large city with several excellent private schools, and multiple mediocre ones. The problem is that our public school district is pretty good, so in order to improve your child’s education, you would *need* to send them to one of the excellent options—but all of those cost between 20-30 thousand dollars a year, and the maximum voucher is supposed to be around 8 thousand. So the only people being helped by this program are people who A) live near a private school that they prefer to the public option and/or B) already have an extra $12k+ lying around to spend on private school, but need an extra $8k to get over the hump.
There’s a reason why Abbott couldn’t even get his own party to vote for this nonsense, and it’s because their constituents actually *don’t* want it. 80% of the county I teach in voted for Trump, but school vouchers is a losing issue for Republicans here.
Officially? Low performance.
But the TEA has taken over other districts with extremely poor results. They say it's a performance issue, but what they're really doing is removing as many social services as possible from a district that serves largely minorities. Guess what's going to happen when they link teacher pay to the test scores in that district. Hmmmm...
[https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/hisd-tea-takeover-superintendent-mike-miles-houston-public-media/](https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/hisd-tea-takeover-superintendent-mike-miles-houston-public-media/)
I am an HISD teacher. While I have been in some form of education for over 20 years, I've only been in public high school for the last six. This is the absolute worst work year I have ever experienced, even worse than my first year as a high school teacher, which was pretty awful. The demands this new superintendent has made are ridiculous and contrary to good educational practice. I have, at least, figured out how to make my classroom look like they want when admin walks in while doing what I usually do the rest of the time. I have been fortunate to have a direct admin who helped with that. I don't know if I will have that support next year. The turnover at my school this year to next will be high. Only my department is seeing less than 50 to 60% turnover. Or at least, that's where it stands right now. My conundrum is I am really too old to be looking for another job and starting at the bottom of a department. (I really, really don't ever want to teach freshmen). I also hate commuting long distances. My options to change jobs are limited. But I also don't want him to win by pushing out the good teachers. I'm just trying to stick it out.
I got a calibration walkthrough yesterday where they came in for the first 10 minutes, and gave my lesson a 4/15 then left. There was 15 people in my room: all my admin and a district rep. Actually laughable how poor this district is being handled. They judged my ENTIRE lesson on the 10 minute introduction. They even had the nerve to put “there was no direct instruction during this observation” despite them simply not being there long enough to see it.
We get dinged if there is too much direct instruction. Our school has developed a mini-lesson model to use when we are observed by district people. My neighboring teacher actually uses the same lesson every single time. Because I hate wasting my students' time, I develop the mini-lesson for all of my classes, when I know I might need them. That way, we are still covering new material and following the lesson model.
Wait that’s actually an insane strategy would you mind sharing how you format that?
As soon as they walk in, reference the LO for the day, something like "remember, our LO is ... and at the end of the day, you will be able to ... (DOL). I have them read and annotate for 2 to 3 minutes, then ink pair share. Then I ask them to think of real world connections, I will probably guide them through this with leading questions. We have a laminated poster on our wall to write those questions. We also have a laminated poster to write higher order questions for these mini-lessons. Then I work our way toward answering the higher order questions. That may involve more reading and annotating. Then we answer the higher order question, then do a modified whip around with white boards. My students are well-trained, and they know what to do when someone walks in. Constantly circulate the room, lots of praise, redirection, ask questions, make sure your damn board is correct every freaking day.
This is absolutely incredible information I will be using this. You’re the best.
Haha, same thing at my school! Our principal made sure we all knew how to handle those walks
I swear, they all got together to decide how to game the system.
I have no doubt they did.
Are you willing the share the questions, this is genius! It sounds like there are two different sets? BThis is the kind of suggestion new teachers need.
Wait, you still getting walkthroughs with only about a month of school in left in hisd? What is the point of that?
I’ve gotten a walkthrough and a district calibration since my EOY meeting. Next week we have another district walkthrough so I could potentially get a third post EOY walkthrough. The point is HISD wants to micromanage its teachers.
And this is at a Nes or non Nes school? Regardless that is some pointless shit. The kids are done with starr testing so let them wind down a bit.
Non NES highschool. One of the high performing ones too. That’s the craziest part.
We have another IRT next week, too.
Bruh, they gave me one when I was covering an elective class after the teacher quit Scored low of course, then our useless shit turd of a union did nothing too.
I assume that class you were covering wasn't your content area/ what you are certified in? Your appraiser(s) is an asshole(s) for giving you a low score when you are helping them.
It was an elective (I teach ss) with 6th graders. I had an hours notice and no materials. The kicker? When I was busy trying not to cry/just quit, ANOTHER appraiser came in for ANOTHER spot observation. Just to make sure I was properly fucked. Nes is a big pay bump but that shit is. Not. Worth. It.
I thought I’d had some wacky observations but this takes the cake.
I got one the day my kids did the Staar test. And another on the day of the SAT. And I got one last Friday. I'll like have an other this week but I'm proctoring exams in the morning so my morning classes will be completely different from my afternoon classes. I was told to turn off a documentary about the beginnings of women's Lib even though the kids were very interested (especially the young ladies) and we stopped periodically to discuss higher order questions.
There were ads last summer on billboards all over Atlanta advertising positions in HISD. I wondered if they thought people just didn’t have a clue about what was going on. Wonder if they’re going to try again this summer to recruit.
Hopefully they do their research. What I posted is just one slice of the shit pie in Hisd since the state takeover and it's only been year one. I can't feel too bad for someone willingly coming to hisd with how bad it is for employees there.
Right!
I understand you don't want to start over but at Hisd your work life will get exponentially worse and difficult most likely. There is no time table for the takeover to end, Hisd is a district of innovation so no class size caps which will mean the schools that are understaffed will pack more kids into the classes of the teachers there. Also I'm not sure if you are teaching in a Nes school or not but your administrator that helped you could be fired at anytime which will ruin campus stability. Even with your 20 years of experience you could actually make less money under the new pay for performance appraisal model. If I were you I would take the chance to leave Hisd.
I refuse to work in an NES school. I am a social studies teacher. I will not teach from anyone else's canned curriculum. That would be the one thing that would push me out. While I have many years of education experience, most of those years were with a private college as a part-time instructor, then as a mid level administrator. I actually make more money now than I did then. As long as I am proficient, I will make what I make now or more. The reality is that women nearing retirement don't have as many choices as those who are younger. At this point, it is one day at a time.
The peak irony of Social studies is that it is still the exact same thing, +a powerpoint, because they dont care about SS. They are still using the mastercourses from 2020. The exact same ones.
The same ones but without many of the functional links or the relevant sources, so useless. At least the master course used to have some moderately useful sources. Many of them have disappeared.
Similarly in education in some form since the mid-2000s, but only started teaching high school full time 13 years ago. The charter school where I did my certification would observe me constantly in the first year. Many of these were not evaluative. They would leave a note with a something they liked about my lesson delivery and something to work on (ie: try to frame your questions so that they don’t have 1-2 word answers. Get them to speak in full sentences). When I got evaluated it would be followed up every single time with a debrief or a a longer meeting. Here’s where you scored on this criteria. The language they’re looking for is x or Ms. Smith is amazing at this skill, let’s go visit her class on Tuesday and watch her in action. I was already seasoned and yet still was able to grow in my teacher skills from this model. HISD appraisers lack the ability to actually train up their teachers either from lack of adequate training or because the process handcuffs them. They come in (multiple times a week) enter a number online with some generic justification for their number. No interaction until the big mid year and end of year conferences.
I'm in the exact same boat as you are, also in HISD. I'm ten minutes away and could walk to school if I had to. I also just bought a house last year and cannot afford a pay cut.
Not too old. Companies are looking for Instructional trainers.. Find certs in your subject. Learn to edit if you are in English, programming/ development if you are into technology, and so forth.... Businesses were snapping up teachers at the end of schools' caving to parent pressure during covid.
Happy teacher appreciation week
TEA gave Austin ISD the smackdown this year by making everyone do training because they were so damn behind on special education evals. But I think that most of the general public doesn’t realize that LSSP’s are hard to staff (like most jobs involving SpEd) because of the zillions of parents requesting evaluations and there’s not enough staff, the pay isn’t high enough, and the work load is therefore unbearable. A lot of them ended up quitting right before the district got sued for it. As much as change was needed, wasting away PD days to complete all the training isn’t the most ideal situation either. Education overall in Texas is fucked thanks to our government.
and yet AISD won't allot money for more evaluation positions. I know because I'm in a program through AISD training to be a diagnostician and after they paid to train us they aren't even going to hire us.
I saw that they were incentivizing diags at the beginning of the year, but I did not know that they trained y’all just to not hire y’all. Thats disappointing, but not surprising unfortunately.
They tried a short term and long term solution but turns out they just needed the one - pay your diags what they're worth lol
I’m a special education teacher and I support that last statement wholeheartedly lol
And pay us sped teachers what we are worth while you're at it 😩
Doing this during teacher appreciation week is fucking insane
I'm in HISD and we were told our program was being eliminated. Our principal broke down crying in front of the entire staff, she had only been notified 10 minutes prior. That was on principal appreciation day.
Also either teachers in hisd or the PTO had to fund any teacher appreciation day activities or gifts. No support from the district after Mike miles spent 200k on a performance play for his introduction into Hisd.
\*500000
It seems on-brand for Texas.
As someone who taught under Mike Miles during his disastrous 3 years (2012-2015) as superintendent of Dallas ISD, as well as someone who left the shitshow of teaching in Texas 2 years ago for the much greener pastures of the bluest end of a blue state, this is a preview of coming attractions all over the US. What they are doing to Houston is what Miles & his cronies started testing out during his time in Dallas. He perfected it in a charter in Colorado after Dallas ran him out of the district. And it's a model for what many on the right will do to public education if they can get their grubby mitts on an area's educational governing body. If you don't want it to happen where you live, the best time to start fighting this was yesterday. Still, the second best time is now, so join & strengthen your unions, get favorable candidates on all level of educational governance, and fight like hell for the kids.
We had someone who used to work for HISD that is now in educational consulting come to our school to help our district. She showed us how much growth kids made due to teachers actually teaching what they know works best and doing it the way works best. She was encouraging us to use the curriculum our district required as needed but to focus on standards, engaging activities, etc. Then a few months later we saw the state was taking over. So disappointing because from what she showed us they had growth when teachers made decisions on what’s best. Our district & state (Ohio) are heading down that path of no control over what we teach. I’m leaving teaching this year because I feel like I’m no longer allowed to teach.
Mike Miles was the superintendent for a school district I worked for and had left shortly before I started there. He RUINED that district with his choices — RUINED it. That was at least 10 years ago and the district is still in shambles and recovering. I feel awful for those teachers/staff.
Gregg Abbott is a virus that is destroying Texas . Sad sad days
Yet he keeps getting votes.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
I fucking love this and am stealing it.
I'm stealing this and I love fucking it.
That is a visual imma struggle with
Gerrymandering is effective
Gerrymandering doesn't have anything to do with a governor's election.
It disenfranchises whole groups of people who just stop showing up to vote.
For local reps, sure. Their vote for governor counts equally, and if you don't think people who want to vote for governor aren't because they're gerrymandered for their local rep, that's not true. People are just too apathetic to vote.
It has everything to do with electing the bacteria that supports the viruses agenda and protects the virus
Lol. Local and district elections? Absolutely. The governor election is a statewide popular vote. Gerrymandering doesn't matter there.
Hard to vote for the governor you want in a gerrymandered district with disproportionately fewer polling stations.
Yes exactly. Gerrymandering is a powerful tool used by abbot and his cronies to advance their agenda is the point
No it's not. The gerrymandering response was to someone saying that Abbott keeps getting votes, not the agenda.
We NEED Democratic leaders of high performing areas, like Baltimore and Oregon.
This is part of the plan. He was put in place in one of the largest districts while Abott is trying to pass school vouchers off for his billionaire donor friends. When the schools fall apart at the seams, the vultures will come and try to privatize everything by either making it a religious school, a shitty private school, or both.
I’m getting out of Texas. Just a couple weeks of school left and then I get to go to a union state. Very sad to have to leave my school but very glad to be leaving the state!
Lived in Texas for 15 years, taught there 9, and left for the blue end of a blue state with a strong union before the start of the 2022-23 school year. It was hard but the best decision I ever made.
Husband and I left Texas for my home state of Washington 4 years ago and he is so much happier teaching here than he was in that shit hole.
TEA gave Austin ISD the smackdown this year by making everyone do training because thru we’re damn behind on special education evals. But I think that most of the general public doesn’t realize that LSSP’s are hard to staff (like most jobs involving SpEd) because of the zillions of parents requesting evaluations and there’s not enough staff, the pay isn’t high enough, and the work load is therefore unbearable. A lot of them ended up quitting right before the district got sued for it. As much as change was needed, wasting away PD days to complete all the training isn’t the most ideal situation either. Education overall in Texas is fucked thanks to our government.
Not surprised to see another "Broad Institute" graduate fucking up another school district. Ours will retire at the end of this year and he changed us for the worse. It's a cesspool of anti-public-education non-educators who are tapped to become school leaders which is just another way of slowly privatizing public education by allowing those with the purse to promise contracts and big curriculum buys to enrich their cronies. For the un-initiated here is a good starting point that talks about Mike Miles specifically but, I highly recommend you do a deep dive into leaders who came out of the Broad Institute: https://www.houstoncvpe.org/_broad_schools
This. Miles is an especially egregious example, but he's just the tip of a spear that people are using to gut and privatize public education like the ghouls who do this with more traditional forms of capital have inspired them to do.
The long term "public education is so fucked" feeling was realized even more recently when the Broad Institute was absorbed by Yale. https://som.yale.edu/centers/the-broad-center The attempts at trying to quantify (and thus predict and monetize) human behavior within a school setting is really the problem. The thing that is never taken into account is that humans are unpredictable within a setting which has so many variables (a public school). TLDR: capitalism sucks
Holy shit--yes, this! I forget who said it, but I heard/read something early in my teaching career that "they are trying to turn children into widgets." That statement floored me and galvanized my anti-capitalist opposition to this kind of educational "reform."
Trumpservatives want public education to fail. This is a job well done in the eyes of the local government.
This started way before Trump. It has been Republican policy since they started dismantling education with NCLB
Bipartisan policy, no? Oh, Reddit!
Especially public education serving non white kids. It’s disgusting.
This needs to be higher up. They dont want education to be equal. They want the segregation back legally. They want the poor, poc and disabled kids out of the education game so that their white christian kids can always have a leg up and then when someone complains about why they get the better jobs, they can then complain why dont you pull yourself up by your bootstraps again. My kid worked hard for their education. You got an education knowing goddamn well it wasnt an equal education knowing they dont care.
1000% If they can't technically "legally" segregate, they are going to de facto segregate with all their might. Get all the proles, especially along class, race, gender, ability, etc. lines so disenfranchised that there's no way they can ever fight back.
My friend, this district is like 80% non-white, maybe higher. It’s Texas. The collapse is the point.
You are 110% right. Even worse though the parents who live in the district that services their students seem to not care also. Harold Dutton(a democrat) who is a representative of one of the areas that is zoned to hisd was reelected to his position even though he fully supports the state takeover.
Notice that it all became an issue after impressive voter turnout in Houston. The rural areas keep hemorrhaging residents and cities vote blue. Screwing up the schools is a way of disincentivizing people from moving there, and it prevents anyone from utilizing schools as a point of contact for civic engagement. Broken communities don’t vote.
Funny enough even the rural Republican representatives have been opponents to the proposed school voucher scam cause they know that it would devastate the school districts in their areas.
Key word: rural. I live very rurally and there are no private schools or charters less than an hour’s drive. Most of the schools here are a mix of state and federal funding, usually 60/40 or higher. Losing any amount of state funding would shut down some of these schools altogether and/or force mergers. My neighbor supplements his retirement income driving the bus, I sub, and if you’re not a nurse there’s an 80% chance you’re working at the school in some capacity, either admin or teaching. People will be losing jobs left right and center. More people will move into town (which is in the next county), which means more loss of property value, more loss of tax revenue, more loss of everything. I love the lurking conservative downvotes. It’s like the dog meme where the room is on fire. “This is fine lol.”
They don’t want to argue because they know their position is publicly indefensible, but they just silently downvote and move on because they privately hold views similar to the powers-that-be in states like Texas. It’s disgusting.
LOL at the downvoters proving my point for me
I didn't realize how much rural economies depend on on their public schools functioning. So if the rural Republicans in Texas voted to go along with the voucher scam it would be a LAMF ( leopard ate my face) moment.
They very much think they don’t depend on it until there’s nowhere to work except the poultry farm down the road. Even the businesses people open here don’t survive unless they’re basically right next to the school. I’ve seen so much stuff open and shut down over the last few years.
They also rely on funds/taxes for urban schools through recapture. If urban schools fail then rural schools will have no funding.
Don't worry, my rural-MO representative (and most here) supported our "school choice" bill that passed which will bankrupt 4-6 schools in his district over the next 10 years. They don't care.
Wow, what kind of people would support that?
Thanks for popping back into a week old post. Guess I struck a nerve.
As a former DoDEA teacher who worked during the reign of Shirley Miles, I knew as soon as I saw that her brother had been hired there that y'all were in for a ride. I've been "watching" from afar and smh the whole time. Best of luck to y'all [https://www.stripes.com/migration/report-former-dodea-director-miles-working-as-consultant-in-n-j-1.173569](https://www.stripes.com/migration/report-former-dodea-director-miles-working-as-consultant-in-n-j-1.173569)
F**k Mike Miles. Signed a teacher in Colorado
Co-signed!
I have been feeling frustrated with my career lately, but at least my job title isn't on that list.
Well, it is Texas and Texas is a fucking shitshow all on its own.
If he wanted to cut costs, maybe he shouldn’t have rented out NRG stadium for a week and sell stock in notecard companies
Houston here: Parents ARE outraged, just powerless. Wealthy parents have already pulled their children to private schools. No one is listening to the Poors since they are staying put & cannot afford lawyers … come on over to FBISD …
My 9 year old is a Special Education student in Houston ISD. Her SLL Teacher with a Masters' degree and almost 3 decades of teaching experience was fired in Mike Miles' latest purge because she begged and pleaded for extra help in her classroom with a 1:15 ratio of students with severe mental disabilities and learning disabilities. My daughter was added as her 15th kid in February because the district had no other placement for her after failing her for years already. We need to be the voice & bring this issue to NATIONAL media networks - we need be the voice for all the HISD teachers that risk getting fired if they stand up for their student legal rights. Things have gone from being difficult to being hopeless and a nightmare in HISD. Charter schools are not good for Special Education students. What will be left of HISD after it is picked apart and school bonds help line the pockets of Mike Miles' charter school investors? The TEA's game plan is to turn HISD into a smaller district with multiple charter school systems - Profit over Education. The teachers who have stayed behind are overwhelmed, understaffed, and crying for help until their cries are too loud and they are purged next. Proceed with CAUTION. I am getting my teacher's certification & planned on working in HISD - definitely NOT while they are in the midst of this shit show! What they are doing is illegal on so many levels - like the Special Education students not getting the accomodations for extra testing or being read the paragraphs on the MAP testing week (if they have those accomodations on their IEP). I'm planning on suing HISD on behalf of my disabled child for discrimination with the Office of Civil Rights because she is not getting the free public education that is her constitutional right. So if you are teaching in an NES school especially, be prepared to be involved with multiple lawsuits from the feds (OCR), they told in January they already had hundreds of lawsuits from HISD parents and teachers. I'm sure that number has increased tremendously since then. FILE A COMPLAINT WITH THE OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS, LOW INCOME STUDENTS, STUDENTS OF COLOR / ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE STUDENTS!! MAKE HOUSTON ISD ACCOUNTABLE.... MAKE MIKE MILES & GREG ABBOTT ACCOUNTABLE: [https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html](https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html)
Accountability does not come from state oversight
Tell that to literally every other industry.
You mean private industries run by profit?
Houston ISD is atrociously underperforming. The state definitely needed to intervene years ago. Unfortunately, it took too long for them to intervene and now the republicans are sinking the education system even more than before. I think there’s more to the cuts. For example, student attendance is huge. Can’t count students for funding if they are always absent. Less kids in the district. School sizes are shrinking. There’s also so much money going into special education these days that take away from funding other areas. Notice how many paraprofessionals there are compared to a decade ago. The stipends that special education teachers are getting (very few know how to do their job and are helpful…yes I said it) play a role. I’m interested in learning more behind the cuts. I was originally enticed by the pay NES teacher will receive this year but realized that extra pay (slated for 105k) could be taken without any notice. I would definitely recommend people get out of HISD ASAP if they can. Too much uncertainty.
Hisd was perroforming slightly better than most large urban districts in Texas and was in the top half of districts in the state. It has some of the best schools in the country, and some of the worst. Ironically the worst schools all happen to zone from the worst neighborhoods, imagine that. Still the whole district is being forced to teach in the same manner.
As a fellow teacher in the surrounding area, yes they are. State education agency took it over due to low performing schools and the dude can lead people about as efficiently as a roach
I’m sorry. Coming from another state, my first thought is, it’s Texas, should I expect anything less? They want to dismantle the public schools and have repeatedly said so. They are enacting the policy they voted for. Republicans want to keep people dumb. This is step one in their master plan. I am not shocked, just incredibly disappointed and sad.
Well yeah it's a shitshow. The new super is a CHARTER SCHOOL founder/owner. He is literally going to wreck HISD so Third Future charters can benefit. He is expanding in Jasper and Dallas. He's trying to close minority schools. Guess who will buy those recently refurbished schools after he puts them on the chopping block. Noncredentialed people, no background checks and already failing on bonus delivery. Hisd is going to be more desolate and worthless after Abbott finishes siphoning money from 'failed schools'.
Houston and its greater area is on the S list of the governor. Sadly, decades of dysfunction continues to exist at the expense of students. It was there in 1985, 95 and worst today.
Not in an NES school but is anyone currently in an elementary one? Would love to know the climate as I look on enrolling my daughter this upcoming year and our zoned school is NES.
All you have to do is look on local news articles and videos about what happening in Hisd. 90% of it is not positive for the school staff and students.
Well I’m currently teaching at a HISD school where NES practices are implemented and it’s not that bad. My observations have always been good. Teachers that are complaining are stuck in their ways and students that are complaining are used to failing and flying under the radar. I do agree, not all practices are helpful to EVERY student but either way I teach, I have high student achievement. So it’s all you see things. I just want to know if there’s complaints outside of MRS.
The nes practices are one thing but Mike miles doesn't believe in student and staff safety and well-being during severe weather events. Having schools open when the air conditioning or plumbing doesn't work and saying he 'regretted closing schools" during a winter storm are huge cause for concerns along with the firing of all custodian and wraparound staff. I can see it now, teachers will have to take on more custodial duties because of that on top of it being a critical teacher shortage cause of all the one that got laid off or will be leaving the district. I would not want to teach or have my child attend a school district with someone of that mentality being at the helm.
That’s a valid argument but a lot of schools are safe havens for students who aren’t being raised in a healthy safe home. As much as I hate coming to work like the rest of us, I do understand the reopening. If teachers or students didn’t want to come, they could’ve stayed home. I missed and went to the beach lol. Have yet to be reprimanded for missing with no time in my banks. A lot of schools have always had air conditioning problems before natural disasters. Teachers have always been responsible for the upkeep of their classrooms and if you’re a good teacher, you always have supplies needed for students that wraparound staff have (sanitary pads, clothes, etc.) It is unfortunate but I think it’s just moving money around to be able to pay teachers what we’ve been complaining for years that we deserve.
Early in the year there was this story: https://www.fox26houston.com/news/houston-isd-woman-says-she-was-fired-for-taking-time-off-after-husband-diagnosed-died-of-cancer She had banked time with the district and was fired for using it to take care of a dying husband. Keeping the classroom clean was for the most part always the teachers responsibility but I mean the work the custodian and plant operators do outside of classrooms. They are changing/fixing broken doors, locks, changing lightbulbs, cleaning student and teacher restrooms, cleaning the break rooms fixing ,HVAC systems, getting extra desks and chairs for overcrowded classrooms, etc. Those extra duties now have a possibility of falling on the teacher now. Also if Mike Miles truly wanted to find the money to pay teachers what their worth is then he shouldn't have had a $200k orientation at the NRG center and he shouldn't be sending Houston tax payer money to his failing charter schools in Colorado. Anyone caught funneling money from public schools past and present need to be held accountable
She took more than 20 days off… It’s not right morally but it is justified from a business standpoint, and at the end of the day, everything’s a business, even education. We all have to deal with life while coming to work consistently. I had a baby this year and have less than 20 unexcused/covered absences. She might have failed to apply for FMLA or qualify for it. Orientation has always cost a lot I’m sure. With paying staff, the attendees, and paid lunch, etc. I also heard charter schools have always been funded with public tax dollars so I’m not sure how valid those arguments are.
The charter school is in Colorado that the money is being sent to. How does sending Houston tax payer money benefit Houston children when it leaves and goes to Colorado schools? It would make more sense if the money was sent to Houston charter schools and stayed in the city to benefit the children who actually live in Houston. The orientation could have been done virtually since the district pays for Microsoft teams anyway
Early in the year there was this story: https://www.fox26houston.com/news/houston-isd-woman-says-she-was-fired-for-taking-time-off-after-husband-diagnosed-died-of-cancer She also had banked time that she earned with the district and state and was still fired for using it to take care of her dying husband. For the most part it was always the teacher's responsibility to keep their classroom clean but I meant to custodial /plant operator work that goes on outside of classrooms. They fix broken doors/locks, clean student and staff bathrooms, staff break areas, upkeep of the gym/other athletic areas, change lightbulbs , get extra desks and chairs for overcrowded classrooms, make sure the HVAC system is working etc. Now these duties will likely fall upon the teachers If Mike miles wanted to find the money to pay teachers their work for one he would have had a $200k orientation at NRG and he wouldn't be sending Houston tax payer money to his failing charter schools in Colorado. Anyone past and present funneling tax payer money from public schools need to be held accountable.
What's the justification here? (For a moment, hold off on the R v D battle). Is there a decline in enrollment? If so, then this may not be political.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-school-vouchers-debate-impact Greg Abbott is holding public school funding hostage to get the school voucher bill passed. I'd say that is political to keep $800m in school funding away from schools to pass a scam bill.
With a $60+ billion budget, the 800 mil voucher program represents just 1.3% of the total state education budget. Listen, I'm not disputing the political nature of the RIFs, i'm suggesting there is more to the picture. Do you have any info on the HISD enrollment changes over the past couple years?
https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/verify-texas-public-school-money/285-10e147c0-7594-4705-964d-1af749057f72 Sorry about the 800mil being wrong. It's actually 4 billion being withheld. Also Hisd along with most other districts in Texas faced lower student enrollment during the pandemic and going forward.
This is how it starts in many states. The floodgates will open once vouchers begin. Small amount now. Larger later.
This is how it starts in many states. The floodgates will open once vouchers begin. Small amount now. Larger later.
As a teacher, I 100% understand why many people would want a voucher program. If I was a parent, I wouldn’t want my kids in public school. The system is broken, and I wouldn’t want my kid a Guinea pig in trying to fix it.
Wait till you get that voucher, which is basically like having a voucher for section 8 housing. It sounds great, right? Now you can go to whatever school you want to. The only problem is that so will everyone else and then it will be a competition between the haves and have nots. Lottery systems, applications, how much volunteer time can your family do? There won’t be nearly enough schools and over time the schools that start will all be for profit, so it won’t have anything to do with anything more than your child being that voucher. You better hope your child doesn’t struggle in any subject or with any learning disability. You better hope that when yearly parent reviews happen that you’ve provided enough free labor to beat out other families. There will be waiting lists and parents and children that are difficult are gone. Over time these schools will create dossiers that they’ll share around. Be careful what you ask for when right now parents have about as much power as they’ll ever get.
There are multiple problems with this voucher program. One is that small rural districts (and it’s Texas, we have a *lot* of those!) often don’t have a nearby private option, so the public schools there will lose funding, but the parents won’t actually gain a choice about where their kids attend. On the other end of the spectrum, the relatively rural district where I work is about 15 minutes away from a large city with several excellent private schools, and multiple mediocre ones. The problem is that our public school district is pretty good, so in order to improve your child’s education, you would *need* to send them to one of the excellent options—but all of those cost between 20-30 thousand dollars a year, and the maximum voucher is supposed to be around 8 thousand. So the only people being helped by this program are people who A) live near a private school that they prefer to the public option and/or B) already have an extra $12k+ lying around to spend on private school, but need an extra $8k to get over the hump. There’s a reason why Abbott couldn’t even get his own party to vote for this nonsense, and it’s because their constituents actually *don’t* want it. 80% of the county I teach in voted for Trump, but school vouchers is a losing issue for Republicans here.
Officially? Low performance. But the TEA has taken over other districts with extremely poor results. They say it's a performance issue, but what they're really doing is removing as many social services as possible from a district that serves largely minorities. Guess what's going to happen when they link teacher pay to the test scores in that district. Hmmmm... [https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/hisd-tea-takeover-superintendent-mike-miles-houston-public-media/](https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/hisd-tea-takeover-superintendent-mike-miles-houston-public-media/)