State faces big HISD decision

A.J. Crabill knows what it’s like to close schools.

In 2010, Crabill, then a 30-year-old member of the Kansas City, Mo., school board, cast a deciding vote to shutter nearly half of the district’s schools, devastating some members of the community.

Eight years later, Crabill is the deputy commissioner of governance for the Texas Education Agency, and he and his boss, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, likely will face a similar quandary with Houston ISD. A new state law is expected to force the agency to shut down several chronically underperforming schools or replace the district’s locally elected school board — with either choice inciting anger across Houston.

“The question becomes: Which actions can be least disruptive to students? And which actions can create the most benefits for students?” Crabill told a Houston gathering last month. “To be clear, there are only hard choices that are left on the table.”

Over the next several months, Morath, Crabill and other leaders in Austin likely will chart the future of HISD, selecting from a short menu of unpalatable options foisted on them by state legislators. Under a law passed in 2015, known as House Bill 1842, the TEA must close campuses or appoint a board of managers to govern HISD if any of the district’s 10 longest-struggling schools fail to meet state academic standards this year — a likely outcome, HISD administrators have conceded.

HISD could have avoided potential sanctions if it surrendered control over the 10 schools to an outside organization, but the district dropped that idea last week following backlash over a plan to partner with charter school operator Energized For STEM Academy Inc., and a raucous school board meeting on Tuesday. Two people were arrested after the president of the board of trustees ordered police to clear the room amid jeers from some in the audience.

Community distrust

District administrators spent several months searching for a partner willing to take over its 10 campuses ahead of a Monday deadline to submit plans, but HISD leaders could not find one that had support from the board of trustees. Several potential partners balked at taking over campuses ahead of the 2018-19 school year, a short time frame for implementing changes. The departure of Superintendent Richard Carranza, who left to become chancellor of New York City public schools in March, also disrupted HISD’s search.

Faced with the possibility of sanctions, vocal community members have opposed school closures, arguing in part that they unfairly target predominately black and Hispanic neighborhoods. In the past few decades, nearly all school closures in HISD have occurred in minority-majority parts of the city, fostering community distrust.

“Closing schools is just very impactful to a neighborhood,” said Jennifer Evans, whose son is a senior at Worthing High School, one of the 10 campuses. “The best thing to do is to keep it open, to provide programs, to market the school and have the best opportunities so students are challenged.”

Some advocates who oppose charter schools and conservative-aligned education policies also have expressed dismay that Morath, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, would have authority to make major decisions impacting HISD.

In addition, several HISD trustees have argued that the district is making progress at its lowest-performing schools, citing its Achieve 180 plans that pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into each campus.

To date, TEA leaders have been relatively tight-lipped about what they will choose for HISD if the district becomes subject to sanctions this year. However, a review of recent TEA actions, comments by Crabill and statements by local leaders shed light on how the coming months could play out.

Crabill, Morath’s top liaison in dealing with HISD the past few months, hinted at last month’s community meeting that school closures are not the best option for solving academic issues. Crabill said he had visited some of the 10 low-performing schools — all of which serve predominately black and Hispanic students in high-poverty neighborhoods — and found their struggles were not due to staff efforts.

“We have to look beyond state-mandated closure as a panacea in this particular instance,” Crabill said. “I don’t say that out of an unwillingness to use that as an option. I say that from someone who’s gone to the campuses and doesn’t see that it actually moves the ball forward for those students.”

The 10 schools at risk of potential closure are Blackshear, Dogan, Highland Heights, Mading and Wesley elementary schools; Henry Middle School; Woodson PK-8; and Kashmere, Wheatley and Worthing high schools. They combine to serve nearly 7,000 students.

If Morath opts for a board of managers, HISD would join several other Texas school districts under state-appointed oversight. Under that option, Morath personally would select members of a temporary governing board, who gradually would be replaced by elected trustees as the district showed progress.

Past takeovers

In recent years, the TEA has employed boards of managers to salvage several districts reeling from corruption or financial distress. It has also ordered the shutdown of a few foundering districts, including North Forest and La Marque ISDs in the Houston area. Houston ISD would become the first district with a board of managers stemming from the 2015 law, which seeks to address academic shortcomings.

No district subject to state intervention has come close to the size of Houston ISD. In the two most prominent takeovers — El Paso ISD (59,400 students) and Beaumont ISD (19,200 students) — then-Texas Education Commissioner Michael L. Williams chose highly accomplished board members from the local community, though many had little to no background in education.

They included former university presidents, prominent business leaders, government bureaucrats and a social service expert, among others. The boards closely mirrored racial and ethnic demographics in both communities.

Robert Turner, aBeaumont-area auto dealership owner who served on the local district’s board of managers, said the governance group helped carry Beaumont through atumultuous era.

“We trusted each other, we respected each other, there was no backbiting or infighting,” Turner said. “We had no agenda other than fixing the schools.”

The El Paso and Beaumont takeovers stabilized both districts, though they were met with mixed reviews from community members.

Across the country, states have sought to get more involved in large, urban districts facing serious academic and financial issues. Gary Ritter, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas who has analyzed state takeover efforts, said intervention sometimes helps steady troubled districts, but there’s “not much evidence that, systematically, this can lead to clear academic benefits.” He also noted Houston is unique from other districts nationwide because only 10 of its 284 schools have been labeled chronically underperforming.

“That certainly seems like an unhelpful wrinkle in the takeover” threat in Houston, Ritter said. “For the most part, in places like Baltimore, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland (and) Philadelphia, they were done when the school district had been showing either poor performance or financial troubles for several years in a row.”

For that reason, state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, wants to see Morath show leniency to HISD. Coleman, whose district includes two of the 10 schools, said HB1842 carries a penalty that is “not appropriate to the circumstance.”

Coleman said he plans to introduce a bill during the 2019 legislative session that would change or repeal the sanctions listed under HB1842, which passed with 85 percent support in the Legislature.

He said he believes many lawmakers were not aware of the implications of the bill when it passed.

In the meantime, Coleman said he hopes Morath finds a method for avoiding any HISD sanctions.

“I advocate that he makes good public policy by not implementing those provisions, with the understanding that members want to alter the law so that it works better than the two options that exist now,” Coleman said.

Morath is expected to decide in June whether to issue academic accountability waivers to districts and schools impacted by Hurricane Harvey. TEA officials have not publicly committed to whether HB1842 sanctions would be implemented if all 10 HISD schools at risk of triggering the law received an accountability waiver.

A few HISD leaders have suggested seven of the 10 schools still could trigger sanctions even with a waiver this year because they have been rated “improvement required” for poor academic performance for five or more years. jacob.carpenter@chron.com twitter.com/chronjacob