HOUSTON — The Houston ISD board voted to officially move forward with more terminations in the district.
This follows the outrage from parents and students at Thursday night's board meeting.
The board voted in the early morning hours to move ahead with the vote for more terminations and not renewing certain contracts. Eight board members voted in favor with one abstention.
Of the more than 200 people who signed up for the meeting’s open comment period, many spoke out against the recent forced resignation of numerous district principals and other school staff members.
HISD’s former “Principal of the Year,” Amanda Wingard, added her voice to the chorus of concern. Wingard was asked to resign from her role at Neff Elementary School earlier this month and said she was never given a reason why.
“If we could’ve avoided all of this, I would’ve wanted to do that for my community and for myself but the manner in which it all happened I had to come and defend myself,” she said.
Rachelle Cabe has students at both Herod Elementary School and Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts Middle School. The concerned parent told KHOU 11 that she wanted to support both principals who were recently asked to step down.
“I have no idea what the district is thinking,” she said. “And it’s not just the principal. We’re looking at Herod as having 60% of its teacher population not returning for the next year or even more than that, it’s devastating our school and devastating our community."
In a Facebook post, Herod’s principal, Dr. Jessica Berry, wrote that she was asked to resign from her position two weeks ago. She later sent two written notices to the HISD “declining” the resignation request.
We spoke to Berry on Thursday, and she said the request stipulated that she could never work at HISD again or take legal action against the district. She explained that she was written up for expressing concern about student privacy and IEPs shortly before she received the request to resign.
“I might be ending my career in public education by speaking out, she said. “But they (students) don’t have a choice in what is happening to them, somebody has to address that these students are our future and they can’t be left behind while adults play games," she said.
In a statement earlier this month, HISD said that all principal contract “non-renewals” are made "with the goal of ensuring every student receives high-quality instruction, every day.”
The district indicated that principals would be evaluated on their school’s performance metrics.
“When a school is rated C or lower, it often means the school is not serving students well on a consistent basis. And where campuses are not meeting the needs of all kids, HISD must examine what is happening at the school. That starts with the school’s leadership,” the statement continued.
At Thursday’s board meeting, numerous teachers, students, and educators demanded to know what specific data was used to evaluate principals if end-year data was not yet available. In March, HISD’s state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles claimed that he would not use mid-year performance data as a metric to fire HISD principals.