It’s best if it’s accompanied by a sincere effort to change one’s actions. But it’s a start regardless.
During much of its first year and a half of service, Houston ISD’s state-appointed school board has endured criticism for what some community members derided as a tight-lipped, opaque approach to district governance.
Now, the board has made an unusual admission: Its critics may have been right.
HISD’s board in September awarded itself just 1 out of 10 possible points on a section of its annual self-evaluation that measured “advocacy and engagement,” records published this week show. Members said the board failed to meet several benchmarks over the past year, including hosting community meetings across high school feeder patterns and having students participate in training sessions about board procedures.
The low evaluation doesn’t trigger any disciplinary processes, such as firing board members or requiring more training. It does, however, suggest an awareness from board members, who replaced HISD’s elected leaders in June 2023 amid a controversial state takeover of the district, of shortcomings with including community members in decision-making.
The grade also comes on heels of a decisive vote against a $4.4 billion HISD bond package, the clearest indicator yet that a large swath of the community is dissatisfied with the district’s leadership.
“It is an acknowledgement that we need to do better,” Board Member Cassandra Auzenne Bandy said.
Part of the improvement will come from following a “Community Engagement Action Plan” that the board approved in May, Bandy said. The plan encourages members to hold meetings with groups of 10 to 20 community stakeholders following a “shared script” that largely centers discussion around student data, rather than other aspects of district operations that have been subject to community criticism, such as high employee turnover.
The board has completed 25 such meetings since May, Bandy said.
The document asserts that the board should seek feedback from voices other than those who speak during board meetings — which have been largely critical of district leadership — because speakers “may not be a representative sample of the community.”
“The problem we’re trying to solve with our new community engagement strategy is, ‘How do we do better?’” said Bandy, who co-chairs the committee on engagement. “It’s not going to be sitting in a room and getting yelled at, or exchanging emails back and forth with someone that’s angry, just for them to post on Facebook.”
I dunno, I feel like maybe they should be listening more to the people who’ve been yelling at them. At least, they should make sure they understand why they’ve been yelled at. The more that the Board can comprehend the message that they should listen less to Mike Miles, the better.