I don’t think so, I think everyone is heading to those other districts.
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So much deadwood. They let go something like 50 folks from HR. I work at a district 1/3 the size and we have a 10 person HR. They let go 50. Principals had individual mentor admins. We have 5 for the entire district of 54 schools. They had on for every principal. Basically a 6 figure salary that was a principal boss.
And I have seen resumes from teachers at HISD that had spelling errors. Dead. Wood.
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Extra admin sure I guess, but who replaces the teachers that leave (whether dead wood or just sick of what’s happening)?
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Your district is then about 1/5 the size of HISD and not 1/3.
The Houston Independent School District (HISD) has 274 schools, including 8 early childhood schools and 160 elementary schools. HISD is the largest school district in Texas and the eighth-largest in the
54000 students to 160000 students. Hisd has a lot of buildings at 50 and 60% capacity. Also this is an executive director that has one report. This person gets paid 120-160k to mentor one principal. We have 5 for the district. They had a 1:1 ratio when tea took over.
I would agree that a 1:1 ratio in that position makes no sense. Might as well have the mentor be the principal instead. I don’t know what the right ratio should be though.
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A lot of districts do it by a feeder pattern. High school, a few middle schools, 6 to 8 elementary schools.
How many hours a day does anyone need mentoring? If the answer is 8 hours 5 days a week, then you’re not cut out to have the title you have.
Yes exactly.
A 10 person HR?
I work “opposite” , for lack of a better word, of a school district that has many hundreds of people working in HR.
Then again, the school district has 1,800 schools and about 175,000, employees.
I see for 2023 HISD enrollment was at 189,000.
On the bigger point, I agree there was probably some deadwood in HISD. But barring
anecdotal stories, I think they have lost some very good teachers and admins due to Miles.
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Plain and simple they were failing. They had corruption on the board. They did this to themselves.
I found enrollment at December of last year at 183,000. Down 30000 from before our reaction to covid. How many schools closed with those 30,000 missing kids? Government never can figure out how to live within its means. So while the bloat stuck around the financing went away to the tune of roughly 180,000,000 state funding and who knows how much federal.
Also, we lose teachers. Teachers leave and take positions at all kinds of districts, Cy-fair, Tomball, magnolia, Conroe, etc. you know where no one moves to? HISD. I have never known a colleague to quit our district and move to HISD.
Who will then replace the good teachers who got fed up and left b/c of the takeover mess?
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That is my main concern. Did HISD need changes? Yes. Is the execution of the changes done correctly or is it just chaos that onlly further erodes the district from meeting their mission?
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Right. Anyone saying HISD was going just fine is absolutely not telling the truth. It’s been badly in need of reform for quite awhile. I’d go more in on Miles, but I think my opinion on the set up is established at this point.
Of course it’s all also a lot of peeing in the wind and theatre. Because if we’re really being honest none of these things at the district level address the biggest determinations of student success: parental involvement and income levels. It’s why one of the best predictors of success is a zip code. No amount of reform, turning libraries into detention, stuffing the money to Colorado charter schools is going to change that stuff.
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Bingo.
And Miles NES , with loss of 75 principals just this month, will not address the zip code problem.
And data seems clear state take overs leave districts in worse shape.
State Takeovers of School Districts Don’t Work - IDRA(Harris%2C
Add to the equation a governor that is bent on implementing a voucher program, and thus further
damaging the public schools, so HISD has a very bleak future.
Nothing like the haves vs the have nots. We should see a greater social stratification over the coming years.
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From an interview Miles had with KPRC today. Not sure what testing results he used or how much he exaggerated, but even if half true, kinda impressive. He is not the long term answer, but a hatchet job was needed.
An excerpt from that press release highlighted Miles’ planned talking points:
“Results show the district drastically reducing the number of “D” and “F” rated schools by nearly two-thirds, from 120 schools in 2023 to 41 in 2024. This improvement was particularly significant at NES schools, where the number of “D” and “F” schools dropped nearly 80 percent – from 63 schools to 14.
*Across the district, the number of “A” and “B” rated schools increased by 82%, from 93 in 2023 to 170 in 2024, while NES campuses, where only 11 schools earned “A” or “B” ratings in 2023 educators and students achieved a remarkable 480% increase, with 53 NES campuses rated “A” or “B” in 2024. Further, preliminary accountability ratings show that Houston ISD is engaged in a transformative effort that benefits all schools, not just the NES campuses, as the number of “D” and “F” non-NES campuses also decreased and the number of “A” and “B” non-NES campuses increased by 30% from 2023-2024.”
It looks like it’s based on HISD calculations. Not questioning the results (surely they know the formula) but seems curious he’d go public with his own calcs a week before the official results come out.
There were 121 schools considered “D” or “F” in the 2022-23 school year, but after a year of Miles’ leadership, there were just 41 schools with those low ratings, according to HISD’s own calculations. There were 93 “A” and “B” rated schools in the 2022-23 school year, which is up to 170 schools with “A” and “B” ratings now.
The Texas Education Agency is set to release official accountability ratings for the 2023-24 school year toward the end of next week.
From August 2022…94% of schools earned A, B, or C rating.
Key findings include:
• Houston ISD maintained an overall B rating from 2019 with a score of 88.
• 96 (35%) campuses earned an A rating, up 39 campuses from 2019.
• 7 (3%) of campuses earned a Not Rated rating, up 4 campuses from 2019.
• 94% of campuses earned A, B, or C ratings, up from 82% in 2019.
• 78% of campuses earned A or B ratings, up from 50% in 2019.
• Wheatley HS, after 8 years of unacceptable performance (including one year of no rating
due to Harvey), earned a C.
• Henry Middle School, after four years of unacceptable performance and then a D in
2019, earned a C.
• Osborne Elementary moved from a 59-F in 2019 to a 96-A in 2022 – a district-high 37-
point increase
• 79 campuses increased their overall rating score by ten or more points
• 243 campuses were eligible this year for Distinction Designations.
• 169 campuses (70% of those eligible) received at least one Distinction Designation.
• 22 campuses (9% of those eligible) received every eligible Distinction Design
Can he just cut the grass first?
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