State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said social work services for students will be provided by a trimmer team of wraparound specialists who will each serve multiple campuses and refer students to off-campus support centers.
Houston ISD is cutting more than 200 wrap-around specialists — who help Houston ISD’s neediest students access food, clothing, hygienic products and other basics — as part of the proposed budget that started with a $528 million deficit. The 48 remaining wraparound workers split their time among four and seven schools each.
“In the 24-25 school year, we will still have wraparound specialists but they will be able to refer kids (to HISD support centers and healthcare providers) much more efficiently and effectively,” Miles said, noting that the specialists would maintain clothing and food banks at every school.
Miles said the cuts were an unfortunate necessity as wraparound services has been funded with grants and federal COVID relief money, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, which expired this year. He said the program had cost HISD about $20 million this year, though the district’s ESSER dashboard indicates HISD spent only about $3.3 million on wraparound specialists. District officials did not immediately return a request for comment about the discrepancy.
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Miles said that an internal review of the efficacy of HISD’s wraparound services indicated that 76% of specialists were assigned to 200 schools with the least need, and that basic needs such as food insecurity and clothing did not require a full-time employee based on their campus. He said that about 27% of wraparound workers completed at least twice as many support actions as the other 73%.
Ruth Kravetz, co-founder of the advocacy group Community Voices for Public Education, pointed to a Houston Public Media report that HISD had already instructed wraparound workers to focus on truancy and dropout prevention in January, rather than meeting basic needs. The Houston Education Research Center at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research is conducting its own study in partnership with the district about the efficacy of HISD’s new Sunrise Centers.
See here for some background. I’ll put aside for now the fact that this is yet another example of Mike Miles saying things about HISD’s finances that are at best misleading if not outright untrue. I’ve said before and I’ll say again now, I think it’s a bad idea to take services away from this population of students that need them so much. I think it’s in opposition to Miles’ own goals for improving academic outcomes, as as noted before the savings in cutting these positions is minimal. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe there were more specialists than we needed and maybe the Sunrise Centers will do as well as the current setup and maybe academic outcomes for this cohort will be just fine. I’m glad to see that research is being done on the efficacy of the Sunrise Centers. Now what I want to know is, if the research shows that I was right and Miles was wrong, then what? Does Miles admit his error and seek to rectify it, or does he throw some more weasel words at us and hope we forget about it? I’m willing to be proven wrong on this. How about you, Mike?
One more thing:
The appointed members of HISD’s Board of Managers also questioned the superintendent about his plans for next year’s budget, which will be up for approval at the board’s next meeting on Thursday. Board members Michelle Cruz Arnold and Jeanette Garza Lindner asked the superintendent why he hadn’t considered pausing or reducing the expansion of his New Education System to 130 schools next year, which would account for about $732 million of the district’s $2.1 billion budget.
“A responsible thing to do moving forward would be to consider postponing (the expansion at) some of the campuses, especially when we’re talking about belt-tightening,” Cruz Arnold said.
Miles said that his budget reflected the board’s goals of boosting academic achievement. Expanding the New Education System was also at the top of the district’s action plan presented to the board in March. Non NES-campuses are expected to face budget cuts of up to 12%.
I appreciate that some of the appointed board members are bringing up the very large expenditure that is the NES, which absolutely could be scaled back at least a little to help deal with the budget issues. I don’t know how much feedback was given back in March when the goal of expanding the NES footprint well beyond its initial scope was first announced, but at least it’s here now. The Board votes on the Miles budget today, so that’s another opportunity to express this disagreement. I’m just saying.
I didn’t know that the schools in Houston offered wrap around services. I came from a place where the county mental health base service unit could provide wrap around services, but they were always in short supply. Not sure what it the best way to help the at risk kids-everyone wants to do something about it, nobody wants to pay for it.