Transcript
Speaker: Howdy y'all, my name is Charles Cruz here at AWS Not Like Ted.
Speaker: I am a retired chemical engineer at an early age because I learned very well from a very good school.
Speaker: Unfortunately, I wasn't HISD, but I value public education and I'm here to speak on behalf of folks that couldn't be here today.
Speaker: I'm from Baytown, Texas.
Speaker: These are the words of teachers who could not be here either because of mandatory NES faculty meetings on Thursdays or because they are too afraid.
Speaker: Teachers report that Amplify and Eureka lessons are full of mistakes, especially in math.
Speaker: Chemical engineer.
Speaker: A veteran teacher reports children are falling asleep on her for the first time ever.
Speaker: One teacher says she is tired of feeling like a robot and her children are not learning.
Speaker: A pre-K teacher has been told to keep lights on during nap time.
Speaker: A kinder teacher is scared to sit down even briefly.
Speaker: Teachers describe the situation as a mess, a nightmare, and talk about leaving mid-year.
Speaker: There's a reason we have democratically elected representatives.
Speaker: Y'all ain't it.
Speaker: Good evening.
Speaker: I'm an HISD parent and a longtime taxpayer, not in front of my democratically elected school board.
Speaker: I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of a teacher who, like many others, cannot be here because of their duties and their fear of retribution.
Speaker: That teacher says this, For the last three weeks, everyone at my school has been told to use multiple response strategies every four minutes.
Speaker: This includes all advanced placement classes.
Speaker: Sometimes a single AP question can take more than 10 minutes to read.
Speaker: The district mandated pacing and use of an MRS every four minutes leaves no time for assignments with any depth or complexity.
Speaker: Usually three weeks into school, I'm getting to know my students strengths, weaknesses, and writing abilities, but not this year.
Speaker: Secondly, the districts that...
Speaker: Unrealistic teacher expectations for AP tests with 80% passing rates when many national passing rates are not even 45%.
Speaker: As a parent, I'm appalled by... But for the last week, I've had a kid that cries every morning...
Speaker: and every evening, crying not to go to school and begging not to go in the morning.
Speaker: She says school's boring, she's not learning, and she would rather be homeschooled at this point, which is really the opposite of what you guys are trying to do, which is keep kids in the district.
Speaker: She's miserable.
Speaker: Her confidence is plummeting and she's starting to lose her joy for learning, which is the opposite of what we want with learners, right?
Speaker: She's a student at a non-NES school, it's not an NESA school, but she's still subjected to this curriculum that is just disengaging, aggressive, and honestly, it's drill and kill.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: She's already doubting her ability to learn, and it's all thanks to this method.
Speaker: So this DOI plan gives the superintendent unbridled access to change district procedures and standards at his whim.
Speaker: It allows Mike Miles, who utterly failed at being superintendent in Dallas ISD, the ability to circumvent the laws that are meant to protect our kids.
Speaker: It gives him, whose only experience in education prior to being a superintendent was running a consulting service for charter schools.
Speaker: Shocking.
Speaker: And all it does is give him the ability to continue to enforce this military-style structure.
Speaker: We know why, because he was in the military.
Speaker: Mike Miles' resume is riddled with scandal.
Speaker: Thank you, ma'am.
Speaker: What you just heard in the intro were public comments from three community members of Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, and at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency.
Speaker: The bell you hear in the audio is a hard cutoff for speakers whose mics were immediately turned off.
Speaker: After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court green-lit the replacement of District Superintendent and the locally elected School Board of Trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott himself.
Speaker: And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, former U.S. State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and Dallas ISD superintendent, amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid, as you just heard in the public comment from community members.
Speaker: The takeover of Houston ISD sits at the intersection of so many issues impacting American education today.
Speaker: Democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism, the so-called parents' rights movement, testing and accountability measures as they relate to poverty, race, and charter schools.
Speaker: On Friday, September 15th, the morning after another heated board meeting in Houston, I spoke with Carina Quesada-Leon.
Speaker: a Houston ISD parent, activist, and former teacher who has been intensely involved in HISD for a decade.
Speaker: And she was generous to speak with me for an hour about the recent history of the majority Hispanic Latino district, the impact of the takeover on teachers, families, and students, how they're experiencing the new educational system of Superintendent Mike Miles, and what's next for the movement opposed to these reactionary changes.
Speaker: We're generally not a current events podcast, but because this is a fast-moving story, we wanted to release it to listeners as soon and as lightly edited as possible.
Speaker: You can also find an overview of the story on our YouTube channel by searching Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: We hope to follow up with Karina and other affected teachers, parents, and students at Houston ISD.
Speaker: If you'd like to reach out to me directly, you can do so by emailing nick at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: And of course, you can always find more of our work and support us at humanrestorationproject.org.
Speaker: I am Karina Quesada and I have three kids in HISD.
Speaker: I used to teach.
Speaker: I taught for about 10 years in Pasadena ISD.
Speaker: I'm now a stay-at-home mom, but a lot of times I'm not at home.
Speaker: I'm actually more of an advocate and an activist.
Speaker: I just don't do it as a paid job.
Speaker: So I'll...
Speaker: Sometimes I go into schools with people, with parents, meeting with principals or having a special education meeting or things like that.
Speaker: I speak Spanish.
Speaker: So our community is always not provided accurate information many times or provided information.
Speaker: So it's a big need.
Speaker: And so I do that when I can.
Speaker: 2013 it started, not here in the district.
Speaker: It started with Mike Miles in Dallas, Mike Morales.
Speaker: The TEA commissioner was a trustee in Dallas and Mike Rawlings was the mayor of Dallas.
Speaker: They wanted to put in a home rule charter.
Speaker: They started funneling a lot of money into school board races, a bunch of billionaires.
Speaker: John Arnold was involved.
Speaker: And so what they wanted to do was become a home rule charter.
Speaker: They needed trustees that would vote
Speaker: to put themselves out of a job, right?
Speaker: And then to proceed with this Home Rule Charter, which would give
Speaker: these businessmen access to these schools where they could now charter them all off, right?
Speaker: And so it was going to be a big cash flow.
Speaker: That did not pass.
Speaker: Like it was like in January 2015 that it didn't pass.
Speaker: But by the summer during the ledge session, they pass HB 1842, which is what we call the takeover law.
Speaker: And also HB 1842,
Speaker: also has districts of innovation in it.
Speaker: It's part of that law.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that passed in 2015.
Speaker: And that is the, that is the law that says if a school has been failing for five years, once it starts, it has failed the state
Speaker: the state test for five years, then the school, the commissioner can do one of two things, either close that school down or take it over.
Speaker: It's important to note that the cut scores are
Speaker: What's going to be passing is decided after the administration of the test.
Speaker: So they back in and they always have at least 5% labeled failing schools.
Speaker: So it's a forced note.
Speaker: You can't ever have all the schools passing.
Speaker: So that was the pretense that they had used then to then my understanding is that the this was wrapped up in courts for a while.
Speaker: And it was sometime over the winter that then the Texas Supreme Court basically cleared the way for what I think the rest of us in the country saw in the spring.
Speaker: which was the announcement of the takeover with Mike Miles put in as this new superintendent and clearing house of this board of trustees stuff.
Speaker: So you're active well in advance of all of this.
Speaker: How does that world change for you then this spring when finally, in the minds of some, this takeover is happening?
Speaker: What does that mean for you and your work and your activism then?
Speaker: So real quick, real, real quick pause too.
Speaker: I just want to go back a little bit.
Speaker: So another law passed in 2017, it's SB 1888.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And that allows for, let's say you have a school that's on year four of having failed, right?
Speaker: You can charter that school off.
Speaker: And that gets you off the ticket, right?
Speaker: That gives you a reprieve in the accountability.
Speaker: So if you charter off your schools, then they won't come and take you over.
Speaker: So in 2018, we had 10 schools on the chopping block before they were going to be chartered off.
Speaker: The community spoke out.
Speaker: We made national headlines because people got dragged out of the meeting, got taken to prison, things like that.
Speaker: We did not charter off those 10 schools.
Speaker: We did not do so because 1842, the takeover law in 1888 were working in conjunction to privatize.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So instead of the state coming and do it, the districts themselves were like, here are our schools.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They were chartering them off themselves.
Speaker: We didn't do that.
Speaker: So then in 2019, the state's like, we're going to take you over.
Speaker: They file a lawsuit.
Speaker: There's an injunction.
Speaker: They can't get it taken over.
Speaker: Then a senator, Benincourt, files 1365, which is basically allows for retroactive stuff and for the school for that to bypass that injunction and circumvent the courts.
Speaker: and allow for the takeover.
Speaker: And that's how we got to where we are.
Speaker: And I would like to make a point that all of these laws were bipartisan support.
Speaker: That's important to note because people think it's a Republican and Democrat thing.
Speaker: And yes, it's more Republicans, but we also have some staunch Republicans in rural areas that are very pro-public ed and are not with this.
Speaker: And when you say chartered off, is there a particular charter management company that then these get passed to?
Speaker: Or what does that look like then for getting chartered off when your school becomes part of that?
Speaker: So they made the language really enticing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: partnerships and you can partner up with a nonprofit.
Speaker: So let's say like, um, like a university wanted to take you on or something.
Speaker: Um, then, you know, the language made it sound to people not really paying attention.
Speaker: Like, well, it can't be that bad.
Speaker: It's an education system sort of thing.
Speaker: That's taking it over.
Speaker: It's, it's fine.
Speaker: But that's not who was going to take the schools.
Speaker: Who was going to take our schools is this charter organization that is shady.
Speaker: I don't know why this woman still has all these schools.
Speaker: There's a lot of fraud going on there.
Speaker: What's the company or who's the person?
Speaker: Lois Bullock.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: I still remember it was one night, 2 a.m.
Speaker: I'm like geeking out, looking up stuff about her because I just figured out that that's where the schools, they were wanting to charter them because they were keeping it a secret who they wanted to order off the schools to.
Speaker: And I find that she has a private company that's making money off of it.
Speaker: So the private company was holding,
Speaker: the land, right?
Speaker: And then she had these different charter school operations and she would charge herself rent.
Speaker: And she'd also pay herself for her services and pay herself as an employee at all these different schools.
Speaker: Sometimes she'd have two schools co-locating in the same building and would charge them both rent.
Speaker: And she'd give charge herself, um, uh, like her salary as well.
Speaker: She's a millionaire.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And this is, I just Googled, is it like Energized for Excellence Academy Inc.?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And yes, yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: There are a lot of articles about this.
Speaker: What is Energized Contract is a noxious corrupt weed energized to exploit.
Speaker: So it seems like, yeah, there is a lot of interesting.
Speaker: And that, to me, from my perspective, that's just baked into it.
Speaker: Anytime that you're
Speaker: in the business of privatizing, of course, people are going to be looking to take a slice off the top or try to figure out a way to funnel more funds.
Speaker: You know, those stories are everywhere.
Speaker: So it's wild that more people weren't hip to that.
Speaker: In my look at...
Speaker: I guess the takeover, the heated school board meetings, et cetera, this really seemed like something that is being done to parents.
Speaker: Of course, from what I can tell, you know, parents are willingly admitting that, of course, not everything is perfect, that some changes need to be made.
Speaker: This seemed like a bridge way too far, something done to parents and the community against their wishes.
Speaker: Is that a correct characterization, you know?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I will be the full to say that our school district before the takeover had issues.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Major issues, major issues of inequality.
Speaker: And it's inequitable.
Speaker: Inequitable.
Speaker: The funds that are dedicated to some schools, like you have this...
Speaker: The one that I hate the most is the HSPVA, the one for the performing arts.
Speaker: And all this money goes to it.
Speaker: And they even, you know, kids audition to be into that school from the district.
Speaker: And then they won't take them.
Speaker: They'll take kids from another district before they take some of our kids.
Speaker: And then you have kids down this, schools down the street that don't have their basic needs met.
Speaker: They don't have basic things.
Speaker: And so I will be the first.
Speaker: But this...
Speaker: What they're doing now is just exasperating like the issues that were.
Speaker: And now it's like you have no recourse.
Speaker: There is no accountability.
Speaker: If you don't like something, what can we do?
Speaker: Before with the elected board, we can come in mass and we can say, we don't like this.
Speaker: We're upset.
Speaker: We're, you know, we don't like it.
Speaker: We don't like it.
Speaker: And that school board trustee, if she saw, he or she saw a lot of people that were in her district,
Speaker: their constituents, they might change their vote, right?
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, they need, they are going to run for reelection, right?
Speaker: So they're accountable to us.
Speaker: Now we don't, they're not accountable.
Speaker: The board of managers is not accountable to us.
Speaker: Mike Miles is not accountable to us.
Speaker: So when we go, it's like, nothing we say matters to them.
Speaker: Because of the way then that the takeover proceeded over the spring is that my understanding is that Mike Miles and the board of trustees are appointed by the governor.
Speaker: Is that a correct way to understand it?
Speaker: Or what's the process by which like the democratically elected people are out?
Speaker: And how does the new board who is not responsive and responsible to you all as Houston parents, how do they get put in charge then?
Speaker: So they were selected, hand selected by our commissioner of education, TA Commissioner Mike Marath, which by the way, that is an appointed position.
Speaker: He's been appointed by the governor.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, at the end of the day, the big bosses are Mike Marath and his boss is Greg Abbott.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, so it's, it's in a way,
Speaker: the appointment by the appointee of the governor.
Speaker: So like at the end of the day, you know, that pyramid doesn't go to you, the parents to decide the pyramid, the power goes up through the election committee or the education commissioner to the governor.
Speaker: So really from the ground floor in Houston, then through the state to the governor themselves directly.
Speaker: One of the things I think that is so bewildering to me, particularly in a state like Texas, I mean, I'm in Iowa, you know, where we've had our own conversations around parents' rights and all these other kinds of loaded phrases, you know.
Speaker: This seems like a total...
Speaker: contradiction to this emphasis and focus on parent rights.
Speaker: It really makes me think of, of course, like, well, who, when we say that phrase, parent rights, who do we mean?
Speaker: What parents are we talking about?
Speaker: This wouldn't happen in a white district in rural Iowa.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: What's your perspective on that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Parents' rights only apply to
Speaker: To white people, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't apply to Latinos and Blacks and minorities.
Speaker: That doesn't apply to us, which interestingly enough, you know, there was all this rhetoric and talk about parents' rights.
Speaker: And I was like, we already have that.
Speaker: Like, if some of you people bothered to inform yourself just a little bit, like,
Speaker: you would know that you have the right to visit your child's classroom.
Speaker: You have the right to look at the curriculum.
Speaker: Like, that already exists, but it was a political talking point that works well for people that don't really know but want to force their views and their opinions on everyone else, right?
Speaker: Like, if there's a book there that I don't like, I don't want my kids to read, fine,
Speaker: I won't let them read it, but then that doesn't mean that I should, that, that, that means that I now can decide whether your kid gets to read it.
Speaker: Like that's not, no, my right doesn't extend to enforce my will onto other people.
Speaker: Now, I mean, it feels it seems like no parent has rights in Houston.
Speaker: Those have been subverted by, you know, this hostile takeover.
Speaker: So how has your experience as a parent and maybe their experience as students in the district between the end of last year, you know, kind of the last year of perhaps normalcy ahead of the takeover and really in the first couple of weeks of class then here in August and September?
Speaker: Well, they are, we are in what's called the Heights in Houston.
Speaker: And the area is predominantly white and it's, it's affluent.
Speaker: So it was signaled very early on that basically these schools would not be touched.
Speaker: However...
Speaker: There are changes going on in the schools.
Speaker: My daughter has told me that the first day of school, she's in middle school, they weren't allowed to have getting to know you activities.
Speaker: They weren't allowed to get to know their teachers and their teachers weren't allowed to get to know them.
Speaker: They have timers and they have to get the pacing is really, really quick.
Speaker: And she is not happy about it.
Speaker: She does understand that this isn't coming from her teachers and it's not coming from her principal.
Speaker: But she's, you know, she still doesn't like it.
Speaker: And she's getting walkthroughs all the time.
Speaker: The principals are constantly in the classroom, constantly.
Speaker: It's just a system of surveillance.
Speaker: She I have a niece and a nephew in a also none of my kids are in an NES school, right, or NES aligned.
Speaker: My niece and nephew, we thought they were also not in an NES school, but that school is what, as like an NES supported school.
Speaker: So it's off the record, off the books, but all the horrible stuff is going on there.
Speaker: And just for listeners real quick to pause, who might not be familiar again with that NES label for the schools.
Speaker: I know it's so, it's so hard.
Speaker: What, what does that mean?
Speaker: And what, what does that look like on the ground for those schools?
Speaker: That is Mike Miles.
Speaker: That's what he called the 28 schools is new education system.
Speaker: And the education system consists of four minute timers where you do demonstrations of learning.
Speaker: You do multiple response strategies where kids have to stop.
Speaker: The teacher has to stop every four minutes, whatever it is that she's teaching.
Speaker: and do some work and write on index cards that like teachers joke that they should have bought stock in with the index card companies because they're going through so many of them um so there's the nes schools oh and their libraries were removed and they're well not the physical library but books were taken out they've left some books maybe here or there and but and the but
Speaker: And the bookshelves are like facing against the walls.
Speaker: And now those are teams.
Speaker: They're called team centers, which is really a detention center.
Speaker: So if a child acts up, they get sent into this room that used to be the library.
Speaker: But also another thing that I found out is that, let's say your nine-year-old.
Speaker: you know, gets removed from the class.
Speaker: So now they got, they have to go into the library where they have their computer and they will get to zoom in and watch the class.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But not only that, so your, their image is now blasted in their classroom on a wall.
Speaker: So they're projected into the class as well through the Zoom.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And so not only was there a spectacle of like, you got to go to the Zoom room, you get Zoomed back in.
Speaker: So we're all still very cognizant of the fact that little Jimmy over here misbehaved or for whatever reason had to leave.
Speaker: Oh, and you can't tell if you're being projected on the wall.
Speaker: You can't tell what the reaction is or what people are saying about you or anything else in the room.
Speaker: And the NES...
Speaker: schools are also the same thing, except the only differences there is the NES schools had to have the teachers all got let go.
Speaker: They had to reapply for their jobs.
Speaker: The NES, the line, those are the ones that their principals, um, volunteered and
Speaker: volunteered because teachers have, principals have been removed from their positions that were resistant.
Speaker: So there are some volunteer schools that are now NES aligned and those, they didn't have to reapply for the jobs.
Speaker: The teachers didn't have to do that, but they do have the Zoom rooms as well.
Speaker: So, and the teachers don't have the added pay.
Speaker: So the, apparently the NES schools had extra pay, which also is a point of contention because
Speaker: What they were advertised as what they were going to get paid is not in actuality what they're getting paid.
Speaker: Am I right to understand then that basically there's like two tiers of schools within Houston ISD then?
Speaker: Because there would be the non-NES ones, which are, is it just business as usual?
Speaker: And then the NES ones?
Speaker: Okay, three.
Speaker: Because then you've got the, okay.
Speaker: NES aligned, the secret NES supported, and the non-NES.
Speaker: Oh, Lord.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it's just kind of, my guess is that those are probably based on like socioeconomic, you know, demographic breakdowns.
Speaker: I would guess that the more affluent whiter schools are probably on the less restricted side.
Speaker: And then the non-white lower socioeconomic schools are probably closer to the more, I don't know, it's like a prison style model almost based on what I can tell, honestly.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And yeah, have you gotten feedback at all from, have you heard anything else from other parents or other students and people about just how these first couple weeks have gone?
Speaker: I've read the posts and I guess horror stories.
Speaker: What have you heard on the ground?
Speaker: Well, this past week, just yesterday when we were at the school board meeting, I found out about the secret NES supported thing because I found out through my sister-in-law, who has two children that just started.
Speaker: They had been homeschooled this whole time, and they were so excited.
Speaker: They're going into third grade, eight-year-old little twins.
Speaker: They were so excited to go to school.
Speaker: They were just so joyous and excited.
Speaker: And now...
Speaker: They are sad, crying, frustrated, feeling dumb and down about themselves, upset.
Speaker: And she's found out that this is what they're doing, the NES, basically the NES curriculum and following all of this stuff, but they still have their libraries, you know?
Speaker: And so that's how she found out.
Speaker: But the curriculum and the bad treatment, right, that is...
Speaker: coming from the top and it has to be doled down, right?
Speaker: Like it's just, um, and so it's just her, her children are English.
Speaker: They're emerging bilingual.
Speaker: So they're stronger actually in Spanish.
Speaker: Um, they're not getting, they're in a dual language school.
Speaker: They're not getting enough, a lot of the Spanish support that they need.
Speaker: And so I found out about that just this week when she got called into a conference because her
Speaker: Children were not completing the work in time.
Speaker: And so, you know, they're really upset because, you know, they try very hard to finish it and some kids finish it and some kids don't.
Speaker: And, you know, one of my nephews said, I wish I could do it, but I can't.
Speaker: And that makes me so sad for him.
Speaker: It's upsetting.
Speaker: And so he says that he, it's very distracting because a lot of people keep always coming into their, into his classroom.
Speaker: and he can't concentrate.
Speaker: Um, and he doesn't have enough Spanish, he says.
Speaker: And so it's really, um, it's really hard and he doesn't like it.
Speaker: He doesn't like his school.
Speaker: Um, and so, but other parents at this board meeting and children were talking last night and, and, and, uh, teachers too.
Speaker: There was a couple of teachers and then there was, um,
Speaker: There were parents that volunteered to speak for teachers who wanted to remain anonymous.
Speaker: So the teacher would write something in and we had people volunteering to read out what the teachers who wanted to remain anonymous were saying.
Speaker: At the end of this meeting, had over 50 people, children included.
Speaker: Oh, and by the way, they were cutting the mic on the children.
Speaker: They were given only a minute.
Speaker: We were all given only a minute.
Speaker: Historically, the elected board never would cut the mic on kids.
Speaker: The kids get nervous.
Speaker: You start stuttering and stammering and you can't get out what you want to say.
Speaker: It's hard.
Speaker: Public speaking is hard for adults.
Speaker: Imagine a child.
Speaker: My little girl is very shy, but she was compelled when she heard her
Speaker: cousins were upset after seeing how happy they were.
Speaker: She's, she was so nervous.
Speaker: She's like, but I want to, I want to do it.
Speaker: She had never gone to a board meeting.
Speaker: I live there and she had never gone to a board meeting, but she was compelled and her mic got cut.
Speaker: Then there were other children whose mics got cut.
Speaker: And then at the end of this meeting, Mike Miles said that that day, today we, the board, the board of managers, we toured, I think he said like 10 schools and saw what, what,
Speaker: We saw what things are actually like on the ground.
Speaker: We saw what the reality is, not what is being said here.
Speaker: So called the children, the teachers, the parents, we're all living in an alternate reality and liars.
Speaker: So it's really, really frustrating, the gaslighting that takes place.
Speaker: Real quick, the other thing that happened last night was the vote on the District of Innovation.
Speaker: I was a district advisory committee member.
Speaker: So the way that used to work was, so you have your elected members of the DAC who are teachers, teachers and staff.
Speaker: They have elections.
Speaker: They get elected.
Speaker: Community members, parents, and business people, they get appointed.
Speaker: They're appointed by the elected board.
Speaker: So, you know, people run for office.
Speaker: You know, they tell you what their vision, their values are.
Speaker: You vote on that person.
Speaker: That person gets elected, right, by the majority of people who believed in their vision and their plan for schools.
Speaker: That person then turns around and appoints two people per their district to be on the deck so that the community still has a voice and is present in this deck.
Speaker: The DAC is only an advisory role, right?
Speaker: You don't have any power.
Speaker: They present like the, you know, the professional development plan, you know, the student handbook.
Speaker: We look at it.
Speaker: We give feedback.
Speaker: Feedback is usually not taken too much seriously.
Speaker: So again, no power except for in 2015 with the passing of HB 1842 that has districts of innovation in statute.
Speaker: It says that
Speaker: One of the ways to be, the only way for the board to become a district of innovation is first the DAC, the district advisory committee has to vote yes.
Speaker: Like a majority vote yes on the DOI, the district of innovation plan that is presented.
Speaker: And once the DAC, the district advisory committee votes yes, then that plan can go before the board and the board will,
Speaker: can then vote on it.
Speaker: And it has to have a two thirds majority vote in order to then become, accept the plan and become a district advisory committee.
Speaker: The reason that there is a clause that says that the district advisory committee has to approve it first is because the district of innovation gives you exemptions to 67, um,
Speaker: 67 things from the Texas Education Code.
Speaker: So you get to exempt yourself from having to have certified teachers, from classroom sizes, from notifying parents that they're being taught by uncertified teacher that the class size is huge.
Speaker: You don't have to do duty-free lunches for teachers, conference periods, planning periods, meetings.
Speaker: things like their contracts, the school year.
Speaker: It's 67 different things.
Speaker: It's a big amount of things, of having to make school improvement plans, of even having a district advisory committee.
Speaker: You can exempt yourself from that, of having campus-based school decision-making bodies.
Speaker: You don't have to have them.
Speaker: You can exempt yourself from a lot of stuff.
Speaker: So because you're
Speaker: because district innovation allows the district to exempt itself from so many state laws and that provide protections and rights to teachers, students, and parents.
Speaker: It needed some checks and balances, some guardrails for not giving too much power to a superintendent and a board when you're going to exempt yourself from state law, right?
Speaker: Let's have a voice for the community.
Speaker: Let's have them have a vote.
Speaker: What do they think?
Speaker: What do these teachers think that this very much affects them?
Speaker: What do the teachers think?
Speaker: What do the parents and community members think?
Speaker: And then if they give it a yes, then it goes off to the board of trustees, right?
Speaker: Well, this administration got ahead of it, changed the policy so that the superintendent could stack the DAC.
Speaker: I got a letter two days ago, finally got an email that my term was, I was dismissed and it was effective immediately.
Speaker: Of the new DAC, the DAC committee used to only be about 39 people.
Speaker: It is now consists of 60.
Speaker: 18 of those people that were appointed, 18 of them had applied to be on the board of managers.
Speaker: All the people that voted no on district that were on that DAC, that voted no to District of Innovation in 2021, because it had come before our advisory committee.
Speaker: It had come before, and we voted no.
Speaker: Those of us that voted no, we got dismissed.
Speaker: The elected teachers, they're still there because they couldn't.
Speaker: But we were let go.
Speaker: There are at least three or four people that were on there, other parents, moms, that were very pro-takeover, very pro-districts of innovation.
Speaker: They're still there.
Speaker: They stacked the deck so they could get it done.
Speaker: So is that a done deal then as of the board meeting last night as far as some of those schools becoming, or I guess the district becoming district of innovation then?
Speaker: Is that a done thing or what's the next step for that?
Speaker: We're in the process of checking boxes, right?
Speaker: They're in the process of checking boxes.
Speaker: So they now named their committee, the planning committee for like what is the district of innovation plan?
Speaker: What's it going to look like, right?
Speaker: Are you going to check off all the exemptions or which exemptions are you going to claim, right?
Speaker: So yesterday was a public hearing on that.
Speaker: And so one of the things I, you know, it was...
Speaker: They told us on Monday that it was going to be on Thursday and then did it at 4 p.m.
Speaker: It's obvious you don't tell me without telling me that you don't want to hear what people want to think about this.
Speaker: And also tell us what exemptions other than a early start to the school year.
Speaker: There were no exemptions.
Speaker: So how can we provide like meaningful comment on something when we don't know, we don't have a clue as to what you plan on putting on there.
Speaker: So that was, they picked the
Speaker: This is something curious.
Speaker: They picked the people that are going to make this plan.
Speaker: One of the people they picked is they picked one of their own.
Speaker: So one of the board of managers is on the DOI, the District of Innovation Planning Committee as well.
Speaker: So it's pretty much just rubber stamping the process now.
Speaker: They know what they want and they're just going to check the boxes to make sure that they have all their legal ducks in a row and everything else.
Speaker: They probably have to have so many hearings and have to do everything else.
Speaker: All that is ready to go.
Speaker: Everything is ready.
Speaker: The plan just needs to be developed.
Speaker: Once it's developed, it goes before the DAC.
Speaker: The DAC has to vote it up or down.
Speaker: So as long as they've stacked it with enough people, it will pass.
Speaker: And then it'll go before the board.
Speaker: And they don't ever, they all vote in unison.
Speaker: They all say yes to whatever it is.
Speaker: You know, they gave him the contracts.
Speaker: They gave him a million dollar check.
Speaker: So anything less than a million dollars, he doesn't have to come to the board to ask.
Speaker: Before it was anything over a hundred thousand.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Now they don't.
Speaker: Now he doesn't.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It just seems like from start to finish, this whole process is just an end run around democracy, basically.
Speaker: Even the District of Innovation thing, you imagine those laws and policies were put in place by the state legislature, by appointed people at the TEA, et cetera.
Speaker: And now-
Speaker: You have an unelected, you know, appointed group at the local level who's going to basically throw those rules out and get to decide kind of how they want to proceed from there.
Speaker: Is there anything, I'm just thinking like, I know the situation's moving so fast.
Speaker: Is there anything that people are missing out on in the national picture?
Speaker: Is there something that needs to have more focus and attention paid to it?
Speaker: Or is it just...
Speaker: such an ongoing you know onslaught everyone's drinking out of a fire hose yeah it's just a constant like there's constantly something going on I heard today I don't know who they are I heard that six principals were removed yesterday okay is it I don't doubt it for one second who they are I don't know it's just a constant constant
Speaker: issue like and it's really it's really telling how discriminatory it is um so we're having like our
Speaker: black and brown communities going without libraries, um, being put in like basically jails.
Speaker: Our students are constant mass surveillance.
Speaker: Um, and, and you don't see the same thing happening in the more affluent schools.
Speaker: There's just a lot more, uh, freedom going on.
Speaker: They still have their libraries.
Speaker: They still have their librarians.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: They're not getting there.
Speaker: They are apparently, I think, all getting walkthroughs, but they're not having the district walkthroughs come in every like every day.
Speaker: And so.
Speaker: It's I think it's a big issue of civil rights, right, and discrimination that's going on.
Speaker: We this is about this is about.
Speaker: A city that is predominantly Hispanic and black.
Speaker: Voting, not doing what the Texas Education Agency wants, right?
Speaker: We said no to chartering off 10 of our schools.
Speaker: And then we said no to becoming a district of innovation.
Speaker: And they said, that's enough of y'all.
Speaker: We've got it now.
Speaker: So we're going to start charting off schools, closing schools, and you will become a district of innovation.
Speaker: We will stack the DAC and you will become a district of innovation.
Speaker: So like you people, you people don't know how to govern yourselves.
Speaker: We're going to have to come in and do it for you, right?
Speaker: The black and the brown people can't govern themselves.
Speaker: They don't know.
Speaker: They don't know any better.
Speaker: Where does it go from here?
Speaker: What, I guess, is the next step for HISD, for parents like yourself, for people who are trying to resist?
Speaker: Where's the energy going?
Speaker: What's the next step?
Speaker: I think that's what we're trying to figure out, right?
Speaker: We're like sitting here trying to rack our brains of what to do.
Speaker: You know, previously, like we've had historically, like here in Houston, when it was time to desegregate the schools, Latinos, Hispanics were labeled as white.
Speaker: And so we're utilized to be,
Speaker: to mix in with with the black students and then say we desegregated and that was not the case like they were their schools were dilapidated and our schools were dilapidated so now we were just mixed in together in dilapidated schools um and still the school district was not uh desegregated so there was a movement by the mexican americans and mexicans and we started they started this is i believe in the 60s huelga schools
Speaker: So strike schools.
Speaker: So they pulled their kids out of school.
Speaker: However, something like that, I think would not work since we're trying to privatize and destroy public schools.
Speaker: I don't know if pulling our kids out of school is, is maybe plays right into it.
Speaker: But my point is, I think we need to figure out some type of direct action.
Speaker: We are going to the school board meetings and again, not for their benefit, but for everybody else and to get media attention and to continue putting that press
Speaker: and that pressure and shining a light on the darkness that, that is going on.
Speaker: Um, but I think it's going to take some type of, of direct action.
Speaker: What that action is, is we're trying to figure that out.
Speaker: And we don't, I believe have the infrastructure or like the systems in place because we're kind of, we're trying to come together because Houston is huge.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we have a ton of schools like to be able to like,
Speaker: amass the amount of people that we might need to amass in order to affect change, it's going to take a little bit of time, I think.
Speaker: But I'm thinking it's probably going to take some type of radical direct action.
Speaker: Is there a place where people can just follow what's going on?
Speaker: I know that I've followed the Houston Education Association account on Twitter.
Speaker: That's been very effective.
Speaker: Are there other places you would recommend people, if they're listening to this, to either check out or if they're local, even in Houston or adjacent cities, to kind of see and follow what's going on?
Speaker: I would say Houston Community Schools for Public Education.
Speaker: It's an organization.
Speaker: I belong to it.
Speaker: So it's just community voices for public education.
Speaker: And it's just an organization.
Speaker: And we have a lot of information.
Speaker: They post on Instagram.
Speaker: They have a Facebook group.
Speaker: They have a website.
Speaker: Uh, they have a Twitter.
Speaker: We also do stuff like information on how to opt out of, of star testing.
Speaker: Like we don't, my children don't ever say, take the star test.
Speaker: Um, we completely opt out of it, including my 11th grade son.
Speaker: So we don't do it.
Speaker: Uh, that's another, that would be harder to do.
Speaker: I think because people are scared, but that would be another means is to just don't take the test.
Speaker: Don't give them the faulty data.
Speaker: Um, but I think, yep.
Speaker: But I think that's a hard ask for people.
Speaker: If they don't, especially if they're scared and they don't know, you know, what we do have trainings, we do help people.
Speaker: We, we know where the letters are.
Speaker: Another organization that, well, organization that does strictly with opting out is, um,
Speaker: Texas, Texans Against the Star or something like that.
Speaker: It's on Facebook.
Speaker: They do an amazing job, but it's not, that's Texas.
Speaker: Houston locally is a community voices for public education, provide a wealth of information, always a breakdown on what just happened and what is going on, even maybe have linked news stories, things like that.
Speaker: It's a great place to go.
Speaker: I just wanted to thank you so much, Karina, for joining me today.
Speaker: You're welcome.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
Speaker: You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
