Houston area officials call for end of Texas Education Agency’s takeover of Houston ISD
Speaking from the steps of the Houston chapter of the NAACP in the Third Ward Thursday morning, a gauntlet of people demanded an end to the occupation of the Houston Independent School District by the Texas Education Agency and its appointed Superintendent F. Mike Miles.
Speakers included NAACP Chapter President James Dixon, Congressman Al Green, newly elected State Senator Molly Cook, Houston Federation of Teachers President Jacqueline Anderson and Johnny Mata of the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice. All railed against the takeover of HISD by the state and the non-elected installation of Mike Miles.
Each speaker filed their own complaint against Miles. From dismissals of award-winning school principals and teachers to the closure of school libraries and subsequent layoffs of librarians and custodians, a litany of allegations of chaos and fallout from Miles’s actions. All focused on stopping Miles’s latest scheme: a five-billion-dollar bond issue for the district.
Congressman Green has called for an independent federal investigation into Mike Miles and the Texas Education Agency's takeover of HISD. He said the funneling of Texas education money to a pair of voucher-funded charter schools in Colorado warrants the investigation. Miles founded Third Future Schools and was a paid consultant for the charter school system last year.
"This is enough probable cause in the court of public opinion for me to seek an opportunity for the Justice Department and the Department of Education to investigate this and find out what is happening to our tax dollars," Green proclaimed.
As HISD struggles to close a $450-million deficit by the reductions in workforce and closure of education and support programs, Green says Third Future Schools of Texas, a charter school network, sent money to its cash-strapped Colorado schools from a general fund, which includes money from Texas.
Green is furious at the idea of Texas money being shipped out of state to help a struggling pair of charter schools in Colorado—which were founded and run by Miles until he was tapped by Governor Greg Abbott to run HISD. Green says the takeover is just another way Abbott is trying to force school vouchers on the public:
"There have been efforts to voucherize our schools and our school systems. We have resisted that; the courts have resisted that," Green said. "But the governor in the state of Texas is persisting with that. If we allow the voucher system to succeed, we will lose the public school system that has benefited this society."
Green quoted from history telling the crowd that vouchers were created in 1956 in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education. Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman proposed defunding public education and giving the money to parents as a voucher to send their kids to charter schools as a way of keeping school segregation going.
As a finishing statement, each speaker offered a slogan that served as a rallying cry repeated by the enthusiastic crowd gathered to discuss and support the HISD independence movement.
Green's words during his time at the lectern certainly set the scene for the press event: "Currently we have government of, by, and for the Governor. So, Governor, you have made your choice. We will make our choice. You are not going to be Governor forever and we will make sure how you have treated Harris County, Houston, Texas in the future."