Houston DSA

Last year, the Texas state government took over HISD and replaced our elected HISD school board with a hand-picked “board of managers” led by former charter school CEO Mike Miles. 

After just one year, it’s clear the state takeover has been a complete disaster, leading to unprecedented teacher and principal turnover, mass staff layoffs, a huge decrease in instructional quality, and financial mismanagement. 

Now they are asking voters to approve a $4.4 billion school bond. We know the state-controlled board of managers doesn’t have the best interests of our communities in mind. We don’t trust them with our students’ educations, and we don’t trust them with a blank check to continue harming our schools! No trust means no bond — vote NO on the HISD props A and B this fall!

Gutting public schools

• Require teachers to use one-size-fits-all, AI-generated curriculum
• A “shocking and alarming” 50% turnover of school principals
• An unprecedented 4,600 HISD teachers have been terminated or driven out. That’s 40% turnover compared to 13% elsewhere.
• They hired 2,000 uncertified teachers
• There have been mass layoffs of wraparound specialists, bilingual and special education, and school custodians
• They closed libraries and replaced them with “discipline zones”

Financial mismanagement

• A 10x increase in the amount Mike Miles can spend without any approval or oversight ($1 million!). For example, he spent $999k on spin bikes for an elementary school.
• Exploding the budget deficit from $118m to $450m in just one year
• $100m on replacing nearly brand-new furniture and technology
• Claiming they can’t afford to replace lead pipes and fix A/C while leaving federal grants, infrastructure money and FEMA dollars on the table
• Lining administrators’ pockets. In the past year Special Ed, Homeless, Bilingual, and Wraparound services have been slashed while the number of staff making $200k+ has tripled.
• $375 million+ in exaggerated construction estimates compared with a cost studies from before the takeover

Deepening Inequalities

• “Co-locating” = School Closures. The bond will spend $580 million to close schools in predominantly Black & Brown neighborhoods.
• Services cut for students in need. HISD denies students special ed accommodations and multi-lingual language instruction.
• Zero community input. School bonds usually take over a year to collect public feedback. This bond was placed on the ballot 3 months after it was announced.