Earlier this month, Kourtney Revels walked the streets of Houston, knocking on doors as she went. Her message to the neighborhood was simple: Pay attention to what’s going on in the Houston Independent School District.
Revels is one of many concerned parents and advocates participating in the “Block Walking” campaign, which was launched by the grassroots advocacy organization Community Voices for Public Education. The campaign aims to spread awareness of the wide range of changes being made to Houston’s school system.
Since many individuals, particularly those whose children were no longer in the educational system, were unaware of the situation, Revels told NBC News, “We started knocking on doors and doing our block walking campaign.”
The Texas Education Agency, the state’s public education organization, seized control of the school system from its elected board in March after a protracted legal dispute. The state hired Mike Miles as superintendent the next month, and he quickly implemented a program dubbed the New Education System to rehabilitate a district with poor reading proficiency and test performance. The HISD website states that in an effort to raise academic results, NES schools will pursue a number of innovations, including more rigorous instruction. The majority of the pupils in the new system’s schools are Black, Latino, and low-income.
Since the creation of NES, detractors have criticized the numerous changes made, including the elimination of almost two dozen special education contracting jobs, modifications to dual language programs, and the transformation of at least 28 school libraries into “team centers,” which serve as discipline spaces where students with behavioral issues are able to attend classes virtually.
Revels and others have dedicated their time to speaking out against the changes, protesting them, and involving the community. Given that her daughter attends the primarily Black and Latino B.C. Elmore Elementary School in the northeast part of the city, the mother claimed she is not hopeful about her daughter’s experience in the upcoming school year.
“I know that schools such as mine have a target on them,” claimed Revels, who has distributed a petition against the state’s ownership of the HISD. “I am aware of the kinds of children who are targets.” Revels recalled a school board meeting from June in which some attendees were directed to an overflow room outside of the main boardroom, which is not customary, according to the Texas Tribune. This was a sign of things to come, she claimed.
When we disturbed them, they locked us in a room and forced us to communicate with them online, according to Revels. Therefore, we already know what will happen to our kids. Because if they can do it to us, they can do it to our kids too.
50 seats in the boardroom were set aside for elected officials, members of the public, and local media, according to a statement from district spokesperson Joseph Sam. In our overflow area, people from the public who couldn’t sit in the boardroom did so. The board members’ debate on the district budget was intended to be more fruitful thanks to how the room was set up, Sam noted. Sam continued by mentioning that attendees in the overflow area had the option of electronically watching the meeting and asking questions.
In an interview with NBC Nightly News that will run on Wednesday, Miles stated that the parents’ annoyance is “understandable.”
One of those librarians who lost their jobs after working for HISD for almost 40 years is Cheryl Hensley. Hensley claimed that she has not yet agreed to take a new job.
She referred to the modification as “hurting.” Hensley received the Siddie Joe Johnson Award in 2023 from the Texas Library Association in recognition of her commitment to children’s book access.
Little children must hold that book. I may inform them that they need direction and assistance finding stuff. I am an expert in that field. It’s regrettable that access to the school library is being restricted to students because working parents might find it difficult to transport their kids to public libraries, she continued.
Hensley has helped raise a number of kids over the course of her long career, some of them went on to become parents in the HISD. Regarding the future of school libraries, Miles stated that instead of having a library, reading will be integrated into other curricula. “We can’t have everything we want and we can’t be all things to all people,” he remarked.
One of the parents who remembered their personal interaction with Hensley as a second-grader was Lauren Simmons. Currently, Simmons has a high school-aged son and an elementary-aged daughter. She criticized the library changes as being “counterproductive” and questioned how her dyslexic daughter would perform in light of the district’s Office of Special Education Services modifications.
In order to concentrate on employing full-time special education personnel, the district will eliminate the special education contract jobs, including those for disability specialists, according to Sam, the HISD spokesperson, who talked to NBC News earlier this month. According to the district website, there are now more than 30 open special education positions. According to detractors, hiring independent contractors as supplemental support personnel has been essential for assessing children with special needs and securing the aid they require.
“What am I expected to do for my baby girl who is trying her hardest,” I would ask Mike Miles. She’s been examined by us. Together, we have developed an individualized plan across several meetings with teachers. It’s incredibly annoying, Simmons added when people insist that we just don’t need more support workers.
Sam stated that the educational system “currently has a sufficient amount of district-employed diagnosticians” and will continue to hire independent contractors as necessary. According to parents and educators, no community feedback was sought before this modification was made.
Simmons stated “we have been pushing back.” “What we wished for was that the state allocate resources to our district in order to address the problems that were already present. As a result, we were silent.
Even elementary school teachers with eight years of experience, like Aurelia Wagner, can sense the stress. She expressed her eagerness to join Miles’ NES plan in the hopes of increasing her income and providing additional resources for her students.
She bemoaned, “I did not sign up to possess libraries shut down so they may be repurposed as potential disciplinary centers. She expressed disinterest in the new, rigid educational system that prioritizes instruction overplay and creative expression.
For the kids, I’m anxious, Wagner added. We no longer conduct ‘getting to know you’ activities on the first or second days of class. Bell-to-bell instruction on the first day of school was what we were informed. I’m worried about the kids’ potential to lose their enthusiasm for learning and attending school. Although school is meant to be a safe place, I believe that for certain kids it will suddenly be a site of drill and killing. The expression “drill and kill” is frequently used in the educational community to denote the idea that overwhelming a student with knowledge will kill their interest in and enthusiasm for learning.
In Houston, Wagner is well-known as a teacher and activist. The Emily Scott Evans Award, presented to third-grade teachers who go above and above for their pupils, was given to her by the district in 2018. In 2022, she unsuccessfully ran for District 147 state representative.
Celina Manzano, a mother of two sons, one with autism and the other with ADHD, expressed concern that her kids would be caught up in the new rigid, discipline-focused educational system.
Manzano said of the superintendent, “He has no idea what I’m fighting with my babies.” She bemoaned that the district’s representatives had not effectively communicated with Spanish-speaking parents, saying, “They haven’t given us any information.”
The Texas Education Agency took control of the district approximately four years after it published the findings of its investigation into board members’ misconduct in 2019 and made a recommendation for the state to remove the district’s elected board of trustees, according to KHOU. Numerous community members, including Revels, Simmons, and Mindy Wilson, as well as thousands of parents, teachers, and students in HISD protested the takeover in vain.
“I didn’t expect all of this to happen so quickly,” said Wilson, whose two children attend HISD. “Our district is blatantly cutting back on its programming, letting go of a lot of its administrators and special education instructors, and transforming holy places like libraries. It has been nothing but horrific train wrecks.