Boy is this going to be fun.
Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles plans in the coming months to propose closing an undisclosed number of schools in the summer of 2026, as the district faces a tight budget and enrollment losses.
Budget plans published by the district Thursday detailed the timeline for considering closures, though they didn’t identify a number of campuses that will be targeted or the amount of money HISD’s state-appointed superintendent hopes to save. HISD won’t close any of its 270 schools ahead of the 2025-26 school year, the documents show.
HISD Communications Chief Alexandra Elizondo said she could not immediately comment on the plans, which were outlined in documents published ahead of the district’s first budget workshop.
“It will be discussed in the fall,” Elizondo said.
HISD’s state-appointed school board must approve any campus closures for the changes to take effect.
The plans come after HISD has lost over 30,000 students over the last five years, meaning “school closures must be considered,” district administrators wrote. HISD leaders are projecting another 8,000-student decline next school year, which would leave the district with about 170,000 students.
A combination of factors have triggered the enrollment losses, including thousands of students leaving for charter schools and declining birth rates. Frustration with Miles’ overhaul also has driven some families to leave HISD, though the number who have left for that reason remains unclear. Schools in Miles’ transformation model lost students at a faster pace than other campuses this year.
The enrollment losses have left HISD with dozens of schools operating at a below-average “building capacity,” which describes the number of children enrolled relative to the maximum number of students that the campus can hold.
In 2023-24, the most recent year with available district data, HISD had 36 schools operating below 50 percent capacity. Another 46 campuses were at 50 percent to 67 percent capacity.
Several large Texas school districts, including Aldine, Austin and San Antonio ISDs, have closed schools in the past few years due to enrollment losses that left many buildings partially empty.
The prospect of school closures has loomed over HISD for several years. Before Miles’ June 2023 appointment amid a state takeover of HISD, the district’s two previous superintendents — Grenita Lathan and Millard House — both said HISD needs to seriously consider closing schools.
We have discussed this before, and there’s no easy way to go about this. Closing a school has a real negative effect on a neighborhood. But it doesn’t make sense to have a bunch of underused buildings, and barring a massive turnaround in enrollment this is going to happen one way or another. There’s a part of me that’s happy that it will be Mike Miles and the appointed Board of Managers that will have to deal with all the turmoil this will stir up. He’s more than earned that.
The Chron gets into some of the budget details.
Due to enrollment decreases and the ongoing legislative session, the district wrote that the 25-26 draft budget “remains conservative, yet ambitious.” The district based the budget on expectations that the Legislature would provide funding for increased teacher salaries and increase the basic allotment by $220 per student during the current legislative session.
The district wrote that it is estimating to get $243.5 million in additional revenue, although the overall net increase would only be $75.5 million due, in part, to the loss of funding caused by declining enrollment. HISD projected that it would lose $67 million in the upcoming fiscal year due to the projected loss of approximately 8,000 students.
To increase revenue, HISD is estimating that it will receive $44 million as part of potential basic allotment increases, $32 million for teacher salary increases, $10 million for security grants and $30 million from other financing sources, according to the budget documents.
According to HISD, it plans to cut more than $208 million from the budget in the 2025-26 academic year, including $57 million in expenditures for recapture costs, $47.2 million due to declining enrollment, $30 million in cuts to department budgets and $16.7 million in one-time expenditures.
It also plans to add $71 million in additional expenditures, including $21.6 million more for teacher salaries, $10.4 million for incentives for teachers at New Education System schools, $8.9 million for debt payment, $5.5 million for Central Office employee salary increases and $5 million for pre-K expansion and support.
HISD wrote that it also plans to invest $100 million in the next two years into the “most urgent security and health projects,” including $40 million in the 2025-2026 school year for capital improvements in security and health, which is in addition the typical funds spent on maintenance and capital improvements.
“We … encourage the board to ensure that the public has timely, accessible information for meaningful feedback. Long-term financial planning should be a priority,” said Trista Bishop-Watt, with Houstonians for Great Public Schools. “Enrollment has been declining in the district for over a decade now, and that underscores the need for careful future planning.”
HISD also wrote that it plans to maintain 130 schools in the New Education System for the 2025-26 school year, unless a campus earns a F rating in the Texas Education Agency’s accountability ratings in June 2025. If so, the district would move up to five schools that earn F ratings to NES, according to the budget presentation.
Sure would be nice if the Lege upped the per-student allocation to catch up with inflation, but we know that’s not going to happen. The Board will approve whatever Miles puts forward, so don’t expect much to change from here unless the Lege does something unexpected. The Press has more.
If they had closed one school, Miles would not be here. Reap what you sow.
Perfect. Close them all and backpay me for the school taxes that were in my HCAD bill.
This is a Trumpian/Abbottonian Plan: Eliminate the mandate that the tax-paying constituents in toto pay for something they don’t participate in (like sending their chidren to a public school) and shift that cost directly to the individuals who have have a vested interest in whatever it is that needs to be accomplished (like sending your kids to a public school). It’s a Single Payer System where the government no longer attends to the needs of the population at large, and requires individuals accept personal (financial) responsibility to achieve personal goals. That’s why we’re stopping aid to third world countries, why we’re looking to end ‘subsidies’ to Ukraine, why we’re going to shutter the DOE. That’s what 49.8% of the voters voted for.
Reminder: Today is no buy anything day; it is the power of the purse.
Many of us who don’t have children in the public schools benefited from that education when we were children. Also all if the people in such a rush to privatize everything conveniently gloss over the inconvenient facts of private schools being able to pick who they admit, not being required to provide special education, and not being available to many rural communities. Also the proposed vouchers would not be enough to allow a poor family to send their children to many of these private schools, but it’s a nice little coupon for the rich families. This leads to the quality of your children’s education being based on your ability to pay. If this gutting of public education continues, I expect plenty of grifters to establish subpar private schools to take advantage of the less well off, and what little social mobility that is left gets further diminished.
Public education is actually in the TX Constitution. But so is home rule, and we see how little respect the GOP has for that.
C.L., so much wrong with that very very facile idea. For one thing, enemy states like China and Russia send aid to third world countries so they can establish a presence there to ultimately build military bases. If we don’t counter this with aid of our own we become endangered. Are you going to pay a satellite company to build a satellite and provide you with hurricanes forecasts? Pay for your own flood control? Etc., etc. etc. Everyone in your dumb scheme will elect for a different level of common spending for different things, and besides being stupid and short-sighted such a scheme will never work in practice. But it has appeal for boneheads.
Things that should not be privatized:
The fire department
The police department
Weather forecasting/ research
Prisons
Air traffic control
Roads
Disaster relief
Flood control measures
The airwaves
Things that should at least have a public option:
Education
Healthcare
Foreign aid also serves another very important role- if we make conditions better in places like Honduras and Haiti, then their people will be more likely to stay there and not come here. Right? So aid to other countries is not only a wise form of defense spending it is also the ultimate in immigration control. Is smart or not smart to stop this aid?
If you have been following events in Ukraine then you will know that the Russians, *our enemy*, have been suffering heavy casualties causing much unrest at home for Putin. The invading army has used up a large portion of their old weapons and do not have good replacements. If we stop providing help for our ally and friend Ukraine the Russians, our enemy, may get a chance to rebuild their warfighting capacity. The EU has an economic base that is eight times larger than Russia’s, and Russian oil and gas compete with US oil and gas interests. It is stupid and traitorous to support Russia, our enemy, instead of Ukraine.
C.L., do you think we should end subsidies to Israel?
Manny, absolutely I do.
The US is obligated by treaty to provide certain amounts of money to Israel and Egypt. We aren’t just giving them money for no reason.