“Lowering the bar to fill vacancies in a district the state took over on the pretense it was not giving students an adequate learning experience? That’s truly astonishing.”
The number of employees who left HISD in June is staggering, and tops off a year of record loss. Nearly 10,000 people of a workforce of less than 30,000 have left since the takeover.
.
@HoustonISD
lost more than 4,000 employees in June, including more than 2,400 teachers.
The district lost more teachers in a single month than it typically loses in an entire year, per
@HoustonChron
.
Older man in shocked voice: Are these alllll you kids? Me: No, i have three more at home. Him: you must have had them every six months. Me: No.
#strangerdanger
#myob
.
Being a journalist is such a weird mix of learning to sit alone because everyone hates you and learning to walk up to total strangers to ask them to tell you everything. Challenges and growth for every personality type.
I noticed that our shuttered Barnes and Noble on Westheimer, where I used to take my kids to load up on books on the last day of school, has been replaced by a large gun store. Sad about
@BellaireHigh
today. (And Houston often.) We should value kids and books. Never guns.
What has happened this summer in HISD is nothing short of stunning: ‘A $1 million power grab:' Houston ISD board votes to remove several limits on superintendent Miles' power via
@houstonchron
We have been asking
@HoustonISD
parents and staff how their first week went. These are quoted excerpts of some of their responses. (Edited only for length.) Please add your voice:
Y'all, he had to spend the night in jail for trying to speak at an
#HISD
meeting: Texas teacher arrested at HISD's heated board of managers meeting charged with trespassing via
@houstonchron
I channeled my inner
@MarieKondo
while editing last night and obliterated words that did not bring me joy. This is what I have always done, actually, but awesome to have a way to explain it to reporters; "Sorry, this does not bring me joy." DELETE. No arguments allowed.
The
@HoustonISD
told the
@HoustonChron
to file an open records request to find out whether a patron was arrested or detained at today's school board meeting. The district is also charging big $$ to release contracts that
@HISDSupe
signed in his first days of office.
I hope people hear these
#HISD
kids' voices: "We went from a good school to a horrible school in a summer. A summer, that was all it took, and now we’re here. I’m not coming back."
I ask my
@UHouston
students in their first assignment of the semester where they get their news. Something like this is the answer 75 percent of the time: "I normally get my news from social media, particularly Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok." Most find
@Twitter
too toxic.
Even my preschool is posting home learning and it’s too much. Between my seven kids, there are one zillion log ons to 4,509 different sites. And I get that we are all trying our hardest, but my head-is-going-to-explode. Don’t worry, I’ll FacebookLive it. OR should I ZOOM it?
... While being observed, I encouraged my students to add color to their activity if they finished with time to spare….later to be told that was unacceptable and we are told to implement the district policy of no coloring activities….. Teachers are absolutely disheartened ...
Horrible! The students are overwhelmed, crying, and complaining as the teachers were giving tests on the first day and enormous loads of nightly homework. ... Superintendent Miles has to go. My child loved school before - this is untenable.
I was mentioning to a private school mom that HISD is off today for Cesar Chavez/ Dolores Huerta Day and she looked at me blankly. So I repeated Cesar Chavez very slowly and, yup, she still had no idea what I meant. Not sure what they teach in private schools, but it's not that.
Mike Miles just made a joke about how kids can read books online ... and then says "none of this matters if you don't have the commitment and heart of teachers." I hear most teachers actually love books and libraries. Some major disconnects here.
The
@HoustonChron
education team getting some love for its tireless coverage of the HISD takeover. It’s been an exhausting year, and these reporters deserve every bit of the acknowledgement! Excellent work, y’all.
So, lemme get this straight: Carnegie, HSPVA, TH Rogers and Energy Institute are on this list, Cool. Mike Miles puts nearly half of HISD principals on notice after mid-year proficiency screening via
@houstonchron
The
@HoustonChron
reporters covering HISD are the best in journalism. Follow
@abauman2
,
@meganmmenchaca
&
@sgonzalezkelly
. Support their important work that sheds light on the HISD takeover. They are doing gut-wrenching accountability reporting like this:
The school has been transformed overnight into a corporate-style charter school with a hostile working environment. ... I have been sleeping very poorly out of stress. I have worked too long every day and still feel unable to meet the rigid expectations of the district ...
I am absolutely scraping myself off the floor after the first week of virtual school. It was sooo hard as a parent. Unsustainable for sure. I will regroup and attempt to improve but I was not expecting this to be so complicated. And I was fully expecting it to be bad.
#hisd
Edited this one through tears today.
@stevegonzaleshc
was the best type of person. He took the photo I use for my Twitter profile. He always saw the good in life and fought so hard. via
@houstonchron
My 5-year-old: “I miss the playground. I miss learning. Learning at school is better. School is a better place than home. It’s much quieter. It’s much schooler. It has chairs. It has scissors. I just love it.” (For the record, we have chairs and scissors. She is holding some now)
HISD staff + families, please know that you can always message tips to
@abauman2
,
@meganmmenchaca
&
@sgonzalezkelly
. We won't use your name without your permission and we will verify the facts before publishing. Ethics and accuracy are our top priority,
OMG. My
@HoustonChron
office is going to start providing free coffee and this is going to save me sooo much money and they are really underestimating how much coffee I drink. And,
@Starbucks
you are dead to us.
If you are a great K-12 reporter, know a great K-12 reporter or think you could grow into one, please reach out to me. We have an opening on our ed team and the
@HoustonChron
is the place to be. Jennifer.radcliffe
@houstonchronicle
.com.
Such heart-breaking accounts of how the first week went for some HISD teachers who say they are fearful, stressed out and unable to build relationships with kids under Miles' leadership: 'Every day, I'm crying' via
@houstonchron
HISD now appears to be polling campuses to see how many students and staff members don't have power in their homes. They are giving people about an hour to respond.
It was a nightmare.... Having the door open caused my A/C unit and ceiling to begin leaking. I had to teach with constant dropping on my tech equipment and me. ... This will definitely be my last year in HISD. I feel like I’m working under a dictatorship.
Breaking: Interrupted by boos and phone alarms every 4 minutes, HISD board votes to begin District of Innovation process, approve state teacher evaluation system via
@houstonchron
... Even if there are some gains in student achievement (which seems unlikely) the juice will not be worth the squeeze. Nearly every teacher is talking about looking elsewhere, even the most dedicated and hardworking. I Would not want to work this way for 120.000 a year.
Newsroom caller says he is the first human clone. "There are many clones. I am one of the very special ones. I am the best." Transferred him to
@Mike_Hixenbaugh
's line.
A district executive director told a kindergarten teacher they could not have a snack break unless it is aligned to a TEKS. ... told a 3rd grade teacher to take down student work as it is just “wallpaper”. Both statements disrupted instruction and occurred in front of students.
My littlest kids were about to get in the inflatable pool, but a bug was freaking the 2-year-old out. The 3-year-old runs to get a cup to fish it out and goes: “I’ve fucking got this.” And she did. 🤣🤪
My 9-year-old says she enjoys wearing a mask because it means people will stop asking her to smile. She's not wrong, that is a real perk.
#introvertproblems
My 2-year-old was muttering “what the fuck is this?” in the shower today and if that doesn’t show just how much kids have learned from quarantine in 2020, I’m not sure what does.
My 5-year-old is riding her bike around the house naked with a spatula in case you’re wondering how social isolation/homeschooling is going here.
#lordoftheflies
I’ve been teaching for more than 10 years and I’ve never felt so stressed out and demoralized in my entire career. I’m constantly worried someone going to walk into my room and not like what they see because they don’t know my content (there’s no district curriculum to follow).
Are you even an education reporter/editor if you don't regularly contemplate whether you will die waiting for a school board meeting to end? Our
@HoustonChron
team is still at two meetings, as midnight approaches.
That
#HISD
made two robocalls on a holiday was kind of annoying, but that they made one at 5:03 a.m. today to tell us about a new webinar is just maddening.
Horrific. Mike Miles's changes have turned our schools into prison systems. He should resign immediately. ... Our teachers are stressed. .... It feels like we are being pushed out of the public school option by treating students, parents, and teachers poorly.
A college student is telling me she gets most of her news from social media because traditional media is too biased. And by social media, she means Snapchat. So, that’s swell.
My daughter did not enjoy her day ... She said the vibe on campus was just different overall. From the teachers to the students. Her exact words were, “I can tell the new sup left his mark, and I do not like it.”
My middle-schooler got scolded today for writing too short a response to a prompt asking for a speech to inspire his losing team during a time-out. He wrote that he told them he had poisoned them and that the only antidote was to win. Really, I'm struggling to see the problem.
I just heard a first grader worry to his virtual class that his less-than-perfect spelling test grade was going to hurt his chances of getting into college and some parent really need to calm down.
One of my kids is currently in tears because she misses school and if this long weekend is a preview of what summer is going to be like, I am screwed. She says home is boring and school is a fun new adventure everyday and is this a prank?
A very weird event is happening today. I am meeting my first blood relative I didn't give birth to. It's my
@23andMe
story. It started simple enough: My parents gave me a kit, and I was curious whether I was actually German, as my one-page
#adoption
paperwork said.🧵
... How am I supposed to teach these kids without know who they are or how they learn best? We are taught, it is ingrained into us, that building relationships can be the MOST important and effective way to teach the kids in your room ...
I have an idea to improve K-12 education: Spend WAY less time teaching APA citation style and WAY more time on basic grammar. After high school/college, almost no one does bibliographies, but everyone uses sentences. And college students are still very unsure of basic grammar.
Some parents at this birthday party are talking about how their kids are not allowed to hang out with known soda drinkers and swear-word user children. We are already here, but cool. My money is on the free-thinking, non-repressed kids in the long term. It’s a gamble. I get it.
In rehersal for a visit with her teacher, I asked my 5-year-old what she’s learned at homeschool. “That fuck face is a bad word,” was her actual answer. (Same kid just told me that the black part of her eyes are called “nipples.”) So we’re making real academic gains here. 😂😂
That time I had to ask Barbara Bush a super awkward question. She handle it in stride, but I hated having to ask her. What a great role model. I had no idea this picture existed until today!
Can I just say that the pressure to raise kids who are not broken and possibly who even flourish - physically, emotionally, socially, academically - is crushing. Some people shrug it off, say the kids will be fine, but the world is filled with examples where that is not the case.
New:
@HoustonISD
had 179,400 students enrolled as of Wednesday, superintendent Mike Miles said at today’s board work session.
Miles says he thinks enrollment will fluctuate and the district will end up with about 180,000 students
100%. I moved here a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina and it's just been one shit show after another with a few breaks for World Series and such. But the food is good so.
Yesterday
@LinaHidalgoTX
said she hoped we could soon move to recovery mode. I thought, recovery from what? Houston is still recovering from the pandemic, the chemical fires, Harvey. We limp between disasters and can't seem to catch a break.
Small victory: We'll hit 40° today.
My
@UHValentiSchool
student told me I was the first teacher to explain run-on sentences. No one else had ever corrected him, and he even shared the lesson with his sister at
@UTAustin
. She thought he was lying when he said a comma can't combine two sentences. I AM CHANGING LIVES.
... I would say that the first week, as far as first weeks have gone in the past, was depressing and scary for the future of elementary education in Houston. Not to mention I would expect most teachers to be look for alternative employment which is really sad.
I’m apparently at the level of parenting where I think I can survive 3 dental cleanings, 2 filling appointments, one tooth removal, a Covid test, two Covid vaccines, an EEG, and an MRI — spread across seven people — in one week, on top of normal life. Please send positive vibes.