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NC state Rep. Lindsey Prather (D), a former educator, caught my attention this morning with this post from Houston. If you did not know the name Lauren Ashley before. Remember it now.
“This woman needs to run for office. I’ll donate to her campaign and get my friends to do the same,” responded substacker Charlotte Clymer.
That’s Mike Miles whom Ashley is castigating. He is the recently state-appointed Houston schools supertintendent. Because as in many other GOP-controlled states, democracy is optional in Texas.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of frozen constituents, no water breaks for construction workers, and dead bodies in floating razor wire barriers fame took over the Houston Independent School System (HISD) in March:
After a prolonged legal battle and weeks of speculation, the Texas Education Agency on Wednesday confirmed it’s removing Houston Independent School District’s democratically elected school board and superintendent, effectively putting the state in charge of its largest school district.
Houston ISD, with 276 schools and an enrollment of nearly 200,000 students, will now be the largest district the agency has taken over since 2000, when it first intervened in a struggling school district.
Superintendent Millard House II and the current school board will finish out the school year, but the TEA will replace them after June 1 with “a board of managers.”
The state-appointed managers, Houston Public media reported, “will hold immense power. They can control the budget, school closures, collaborations with charter networks, policies around curriculum and library books, as well as hiring or firing the superintendent, among other important decisions.”
This week, they appear ready to hand state-appointed superintendent Miles even more power:
The Houston ISD Board of Managers (BOM) appears ready to grant Superintendent Mike Miles the ability to spend up to $2 million at a time without board approval, the power to change magnet programs and the authority to seek a waiver from the Texas Education Agency allowing the district to hire non-certified educators.
That is what prompted Ashley’s comments. She might as well have been addressing the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Division.
Have a nice Saturday. I have to back and watch that again.
