Houston ISD state-appointed board 5-4 approves $2.1 billion budget for 2024-25 – Houston Public Media

Houston ISD’s state-appointed board of trustees after hearing from more than 100 students, parents, teachers and community members who spoke out against a proposed $2.1 billion operating budget that doubles reforms implemented by Superintendent Mike Miles, narrowly voted to approve it. late Thursday evening.

With a 5-4 vote, the closest the managers have come since they and Miles were appointed a year ago by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, the board approved a budget for the 2024-25 academic year which includes an expansion of the new Miles program. Education system (NES). The model includes predefined lesson plans, an increased emphasis on discipline and test-based performance evaluations, and increased teacher salaries.

Eighty-five of HISD’s 274 campuses operated under the NES model in 2023-24, and an additional 45 schools will be under that model in the fall. Miles said there was “sufficient evidence” that his NES model improved student skills, citing recently released standardized test scores that showed a greater percentage of HISD students met grade level standards at during his first year as superintendent. According to Miles, high school, middle school and elementary students on NES campuses demonstrated higher rates of improvement, even though smaller percentages of those students met STAAR standards compared to other schools in the district.

“I think you’re going to find that our system is the best way, the most efficient way to get the results that we want,” Miles said before the vote.

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Michelle Cruz Arnold, Cassandra Auzenne Bandy, Rolando Martinez and Adam Rivon were the board members who voted against approving the budget, which under state law could have been amended and represented at the managers later this month. None expressed opposition before the vote, although Rivon said he wondered how the NES reforms would be phased out after these schools — most of which are historically low-performing campuses located in communities of low-income color – improved their grades.

Board members Janette Garza Lindner and Angela Lemond Flowers, while voting in favor of the budget, asked Miles whether non-NES schools would receive adequate support and whether the two groups of schools and the community HISD as a whole were opposed.

Earlier in the sometimes contentious meeting, in which the board ordered two brief recesses because audience members made remarks while Miles was speaking and Division Superintendent Orlando Riddick had repeatedly talked about “dashboard” in reference to the district’s STAAR scores, a stream of community members criticized Miles’ leadership and urged managers to reject the budget proposal.

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Duncan Klussmann, a former Houston area superintendent who is now a clinical assistant professor at the University of Houston’s College of Education, said: Houston Public Media before the meeting, the NES model is designed to improve standardized test scores. He also said it was not determined whether the system would help students be more successful after graduation.

“I know a lot of money has been shifted from non-NES schools, like the ones my kids go to, to NES schools,” said HISD parent Carlos Goenaga. “I’m not sure why they want to spend a lot of money on an unproven system like NES. If you were there today, you heard a lot of parents, former teachers, and current teachers talking about all the shortcomings of NES “I don’t know why he would want to spend even more money on this when the schools with a proven track record are getting less money. ”

Although HISD’s NES schools are expected to have 23,000 fewer students than non-NES campuses next year, according to data released by the district, the district is allocating an additional $27 million to those campuses, or an additional $2,500 per student. District administration attributed the gap to higher teacher salaries and greater special education needs on NES campuses, where there are about 1,000 more special education students.

Miles said the average teacher salary in the district will increase from $68,250 this year to $77,300 next year, with the average teacher salary on NES campuses increasing to $84,400.

Even though teacher salaries will increase and HISD has budgeted more than $1.2 billion for teacher pay, it has cut teaching positions and other staff roles in an effort to close a deficit of funding of $528 million. Teachers and principals have also been forced to resign or fired due to their performance, sparking community protests.

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The budget deficit is the result of declining enrollment in recent years, the end of federal pandemic relief funds and the fact that Texas lawmakers have not increased the per-pupil allocation for public schools since 2019, factors that contributed to budget deficits in other Houston. neighborhoods in the region.

Among the HISD jobs that have been eliminated are campus specialists, dedicated professionals who helped students with unmet needs such as food, clothing and health care. Instead of having full specialists in every school next year, HISD plans to save $14 million by having 48 specialists at the district level while also using its eight Sunrise Centers, which provide many of the same services.

Kenneth Williams, a Kashmere Gardens community member and founding director of the Northeast Houston Redevelopment Council, said he does not believe HISD would be able to adequately meet the needs of its most vulnerable students without campus professionals . He therefore urged the board to keep them while asking them to vote against the proposed budget, which they almost did.

“Now you take a few people and try to help them solve problems on, what, 270 school campuses?” » Williams said. “This is ridiculous. It won’t work.”