Texas had a major education shake-up this year when the Texas Education Commissioner, Mike Morath, replaced HISD’s nine elected trustees with a state-appointed board of managers. The state also appointed superintendent Mike Miles in 20231. Miles almost immediately announced plans for overhauling the school system. Among the many changes Miles outlined were eliminating 2,347 positions from HISD’s central office, adding cameras to classrooms to capture behavior problems, paying some teachers more to work with troublesome youth, and eliminating librarians and libraries from 28 different schools in the district2.
The current plan is to use the former library spaces to house kids with behavioral problems3,4. Parents are upset that the district is choosing to remove resources from some schools and not others5.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner
“You cannot have a situation where you’re closing libraries for some schools in certain neighborhoods and there are other neighborhoods where there are libraries fully equipped,” Turner said during Wednesday’s city council meeting. “What the hell are you doing?”
While HISD is removing librarian positions, they are actively hiring more school police officers and offering them a pay bump6. HISD did offer librarians whose positions were eliminated the chance to move to other schools in the district7.
The Houston Independent School District has 276 schools and almost 200,000 students, making it the largest school district in Texas.
To learn more and how to get involved visit Students Need Libraries in HISD.
