As a student taking five AP classes and one IB class, it takes nothing short of hospitalization for me to miss school. While I don’t condone this practice, I’m not the only busy student with this habit. Kids come to school with everything from strep throat to walking pneumonia in order to stay on top of classes. But, Thursday I called in sick, along with over 1,000 other students from around 80 different HISD schools — not because of an illness but because of a much more harmful pestilence: the state takeover of HISD.
In 2023, TEA director Mike Morath appointed Mike Miles as the HISD superintendent along with a new HISD Board of Managers on a legal technicality, ousting the democratically elected HISD superintendent and Board of Managers. HISD remains under state control. The takeover has been widely criticized for a multitude of reasons: dismantling school libraries, low quality AI-generated curriculums, a lack of financial transparency and droves of families leaving the district, to name a few.
While I may be perfectly healthy today, our school district is not. Four out of my seven teachers left last year to work outside of HISD, and they’re just a few of the thousands of teachers who left the district post-takeover. As a student, it’s harrowing to watch teachers break down in tears in front of their students, and it feels even worse to sign their goodbye cards soon after. In addition to important emotional attachments, high teacher turnover makes planning for the future as a student increasingly difficult. Mentorship, potential recommendation letters and expertise are lost when teachers are lost…