Other TEA News

Houston ISD Takeover Update
The TEA filed an appeal (Jan. 9) of an Austin state district judge’s order the day before that temporarily prevents the agency from taking over Houston ISD by replacing its elected board with an appointed board.

The Austin judge had ordered the TEA not to move forward with the HISD takeover until a hearing could be held in June. The dispute moved to the state court arena after a federal judge in Houston dismissed HISD’s federal lawsuit seeking to block the takeover.

HB3 news
The TEA announced (Jan. 9) that it is accepting waiver applications from districts — until March 2, 2020 — for opting out of the HB3 requirement to provide full-day prekindergarten for eligible four-year-olds starting next school year. The advisory gives the criteria for which the waiver may be granted for up to three years, and renewable only once.

Report Cards
The TEA recently announced the online availability of both the state and federal versions of school “report cards” for the state, ISD/charter district level and campus levels.

Fast Growth Allotment
The TEA adopted (without any changes from what had been proposed) the rule to implement HB3’s fast growth allotment provisions. Effective: Jan. 9.

The TEA reported receiving more than 2,500 public comments from the Klein ISD community (employees, parents, citizens, etc.). KISD estimated that the rule, as proposed, would cost it $25 million in state aid over the next two years and will reverse the district’s 20+ year history of being a fast growth ISD, including its ranking as the 20th fastest growing district in the state.

A key objection voiced by KISD and other districts that would be negatively affected was that the rule revision based the allotment on a calculation that factored in the “percentage” of student average daily attendance (ADA) growth instead of on an “absolute” student ADA growth calculation — which will result in 237 of the 316 ISDs that will receive the allotment will have had an enrollment growth of less than 200 students from School Year 2017-18.

Smaller and midsize districts that would presumably benefit from the rule revision supported the changes.

The TEA, in its official response contended the rule as adopted met the criteria and goals for the allotment under HB3.

Charter Schools
The TEA held a hearing (Jan. 13) on a proposed rule revision (here and here) that would allow high performing charters, based on how well they score on various academic, financial and other indicators on a proposed revised Charter School Performance Frameworks, to have the near-automatic ability to add new campuses wherever they wanted in the state.

Charters scoring at the Framework’s lowest level would not be able to add new campuses and could have their charters revoked.

A coalition of about 17 public school advocacy groups, including the state’s major school board, administrator and teacher associations, testified against the proposed rule change, arguing (according to the Texas Tribune) that a virtually unchecked expansion of charters would eventually burden the state financially and siphon taxpayer money and students from traditional schools.

Charter school representatives disagreed. “If you are doing well, you can grow. If you are not doing well, you cannot grow,” the Tribune quoted Starlee Coleman of the Texas Charter Schools Association as saying.

Earliest possible adoption date: Feb. 23.