As Houston ISD workshops budget to fund strategic plan, some directors want more details
More than a month after Houston ISD Superintendent Millard House II unveiled a strategic plan to make the district fairer, administrators still have unanswered questions about how to pay and concerns about whether parents and community members understand some of the changes that would occur. .
Chief among the changes that raise some of these questions is House’s call to centralize funding for certain positions and programs, a change from the district’s decentralized system that allows principals to spend their budgets as they see fit. seems.
Under the plan, the district would centrally fund jobs such as vice principals, nurses and fine arts teachers, in an effort to ensure that all campuses fill these positions, which is currently not the case. Additionally, the district would centrally fund programs such as advanced placement, special education supports, and athletics.
In interviews and during budget workshops this month, administrators largely agreed that all campuses should have these staff members and programs, but several say they want more information on how whose changes will affect the autonomy of directors.
They also want to know how the district will pay for the initiative, which is expected to cost $255 million to implement in the first year of the five-year plan.
The council is due to hold another budget workshop on Thursday afternoon.
Beyond funding, the strategic plan would increase teacher base salaries, offer signing bonuses to new educators, expand early childhood education, reorient how the district communicates with families, and expand magnet programs. in areas where there are none.
The district plans to use federal COVID-19 relief money and general budget funds to pay for the first year. However, its funding in other years has not yet been discussed in detail.
“It’s not the first time that this type of change has been proposed, is it? What I would like to see as an admin is to see that there is transparency around the process, that there is community understanding and buy-in,” said admin Judith Cruz. , currently chair of the board, “and ultimately that there is alignment with the vision and goals of the board.
More recently, former Superintendent Richard Carranza proposed centralizing various personnel and budget decisions, but the plan fell through after he left the school system in 2018, less than two years into his term. His successor, Acting Superintendent Grenita Lathan, said the district needed more outreach before changing its funding model.
The district was to create a committee to study the allocation of resources. It is not clear if he ever did.
Administrator Dani Hernandez asked House during a workshop on Thursday if this group had ever been formed and produced reports. House said he didn’t know.
“I feel like it’s a lot more of a plan than before,” Hernandez said after last week’s presentation. “I still have a lot of questions about it.”
Administrators said the change will not be a complete abandonment of decentralized district operations, but rather a hybrid model in which directors will still make some budgetary decisions.
Duncan Klussmann, former superintendent of Spring Branch ISD, said the level of autonomy given to principals that is often associated with HISD could lead to different programs being available to students across the district without “guardrails.”
A 2019 report from the Texas Legislative Budget Board called for structural changes across the district after finding that the decentralized model had provided inconsistent resources for students and poor tracking of expenditures.
“I think there’s a balance that organizations are always looking for,” Klussmann said, “to try to find that right balance between campus autonomy and centralization.”
Marguerite Roza, director of an education finance research center, Edunomics Lab, at Georgetown University, questioned the speed of the proposed changes and expressed skepticism about what administrators say is a hybrid model. A district observer for two decades, she said she plans to attend this week’s workshop at the council’s request.
“Most districts, if at all, if they’re going to make some kind of big financial change — like moving to decentralization or recentralization — are going to do it with a multi-year planning period and some sort of set-up. progressive,” Roza said. “Here, we’re like, all in a month, blinking, and it looks like something that’s at odds with the district’s established theory of action is coming up for a vote.”
The district’s current funding model, in which campuses receive a base amount for each student, plus “weightings” for characteristics, such as being an English language learner or homeless or receiving of special education services, is part of the theory of the Board of Education. of action, according to the district’s website.
Administrator Kathy Blueford-Daniels said she welcomes the proposed change if it helps children who are currently underserved. She said several schools in her district, which includes the far north and northeast of the city, do not offer magnet programs.
“We have to step out of our comfort zone and do what’s best for the kids,” she said. “This new plan will create programs in schools that have none, zero, or have had little support.”
Jackie Anderson, leader of the district’s largest employee union, the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she was “cautiously optimistic” after the latest workshop.
“I look forward to more information, but I know we need to start doing things differently in HISD if we expect a different outcome,” Anderson said. “There should be a basic minimum standard for every school in the district and if it takes a centralized budget, or some part of the budget to be centralized for that to happen, I think that’s a good idea.”
The price to pay for the changes remains alarming for some.
“I hear a lot of good ideas, things I can put into practice, with concerns about how we pay,” administrator Sue Deigaard said. “What are the priorities and how are we going to pay them?