This is one of those cool ideas that falls in the bucket of “it would be so much better if it weren’t needed in the first place”.
With little data available regarding why employees were quitting their jobs in the Houston ISD, a parent decided to do her own digging.
HISD parent Becky Seabrook said she observed a mismatch between what parents were experiencing, and the district reporting that the vast majority of teachers marked that they planned to return next academic year on its Intent to Return Survey. She also felt a disconnect between community conversations and the administration claiming that the educators leaving were not quality teachers.
Seabrook started a Google Forms survey for departing HISD employees to submit information including time employed in district, certification status, reason they left their position, time of departure, and the employee’s destination. Two free-response questions allowed the respondent to expand on any answers and on their experience in HISD. The first submissions came in May, she said.
“I wanted to go into it with an open mind and thinking maybe there’ll be some positive things — people that left because they were moving, or because they were retiring, or what not. But it was one after the other,” Seabrook said. “I don’t know how the district has any teachers left, to be honest. It’s a really toxic environment, based on the stories that these teachers are telling.”
Community members read some of these responses at the Oct. 10 board meeting. Some called this initiative an “exit interview” after an exchange between appointed board members and district leadership brought to light that there is no consistently administered exit interview for district employees. Board members at the September board meeting asked state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles about exit interviews during a teacher workforce presentation. Miles turned to Chief Human Resources Officer Jessica Neyman, sitting with other district employees, and Neyman said exit interviews are conducted upon request.
It was unclear by Neyman’s response how employees were informed of the exit interview option, and it is unclear how many employees took exit interviews last academic year.
While Seabrook’s survey format is admittedly unscientific, it is painting a picture of why some employees left their jobs in HISD.
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Seabrook said some common themes among responses included a stressful environment, that reforms did not reflect high quality education or best practices, and concerns with school leadership being replaced after speaking up. Some respondents wrote that district reforms were not in the best interest of students and felt like they were no longer able to support and protect students, she said.
A bit of disclosure up front, Becky Seabrook is a Facebook friend and former neighbor of mine. I smiled when I saw her name in this story. As I said up front, I think this was a good idea and I’m glad someone not only thought of it but followed through on it. We deserve to know this and we sure weren’t getting a straight answer from HISD. And that’s the second half of my opening statement, that it shouldn’t have come to this. HISD would want to know and would want us to know what it was going to do about it. Of course, in a better world we wouldn’t have had the need to track the reason for so many departures in the first place. But here we are. The data may not be ideal but it’s more than we were ever going to get. And that’s good to know.