TEA commissioner to announce HISD transition back to elected control by end of next school year

From the aftermath of student walkouts to the end of the HISD takeover, ABC13 spoke with the head of the Texas Education Agency.

TEA COMMISSIONER INSISTS HE IS NOT POLITIZING OPTIONS

This week, the TEA released guidelines for districts regarding student walkouts. Protests have erupted across the state following incidents involving ICE agents.

The guidelines list consequences that may arise for teachers and a district if the walkout is facilitated by teachers and staff.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath spoke Friday at a Fort Bend Regional Partnership event. ABC13 asked him about the new guidelines.

“What we don’t want is a taxpayer-funded institution that pressures students into one ideology or another,” Morath said. “No matter which direction. This kind of politics should stop at the school gate.”

Morath was appointed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. We asked Morath if the protests were about conservative ideology, whether the guidelines still would have been released.

“It’s not about what political ideology is at all,” Morath explained.

While teachers could lose their licenses and districts could face a power grab, Morath said he didn’t want to stop students from expressing themselves freely if they led the walkout.

However, that also doesn’t mean he’s saying they should avoid punishment.

“Students doing this on their own, without support from the administration, that’s another thing,” Morath said. “It will of course happen. If a student leaves class and it is an unexcused absence, there will usually be consequences.”

MORATH SAYS HISD TAKEOVER TRANSITION PERIOD STILL ON TRACK

Another topic ABC13 asked Morath about was the HISD buyout. Nearly three years ago, the state removed elected administrators and appointed a board of trustees.

Last summer, Morath extended the buyout until June 2027. On Friday, he told us that the timeline for the transition process was still in effect and that the law prevented him from extending it further.

“It was always a brief intervention to help reform so that it better served students that it wasn’t serving before,” Morath said. “By all accounts, it seems to be working.”

Morath was vague about what the timeline would look like. The TEA said it will take more than three years for local electoral control to be restored. Once the transition begins, TEA said several board officers will be replaced each year with elected directors until the entire board is made up entirely of elected directors.

According to Morath, board members could choose to keep Superintendent Mike Miles or remove him. “Whoever the board is, they choose the superintendent,” Morath explained. “When you go back to a local election board, if they want to make changes to the superintendency, then they can change the superintendency.”

TEACHERS UNION LEADERS REMAIN SKEPTICAL THAT TRANSITION PROCESS IS COMING

After Morath told ABC13 the transition process was still on schedule, we reached out to the teachers union.

Houston Federation of Teachers Unions President Jackie Anderson said they still aren’t aware of the details. “We don’t have anything in writing because they haven’t been very transparent about what it would look like or how it would happen,” Anderson said.

Anderson said it’s time to restore local election control, but he’s not sure it will start next year.

“It’s total chaos,” Anderson said. “We might hear something today and tomorrow it will be something else.”

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