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Sit up and listen, folks: HISD is about to make big changes

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HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza 
HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle

Wake up, parents and grandparents. Wake up, business leaders. Wake up, anybody who cares about the future of Houston public schools.

As we speak, a plan is being devised to reinvent the largest school district in the state in a way that would have been Mission Impossible a year ago. It could be the answer. It could be a disaster. The details aren't in yet. At any rate, it's time to start paying attention.

Recall that it was just last May when newish Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza suggested a simple, albeit deep, funding cut for district's celebrated magnet programs over several years. Parents and school board members responded with fury - as they had years before - that forced the schools chief to quickly withdraw the proposal.

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But then came "recapture," a process requiring the district to give millions of dollars back to the state because even though its students are largely poor, its property wealth is considered high. Then came Hurricane Harvey, which devastated facilities and potentially property tax collections.

And finally, there came the announcement a week ago that HISD needs to slash $200 million from its 2018-19 budget.

Suddenly, Carranza wasn't just announcing across-the-board cuts, including teachers' jobs. He revived his earlier effort to reform the magnet system, with a new, more sweeping plan calling for cuts, changes to entry requirements and eligibility. Then he went further still.

He made clear his intention to, in effect, tame what was sometimes known as the Wild West of Texas' urban school districts because of the power given principals to spend a pot of money as they saw fit for their unique campuses. Carranza proposed a drastic change in philosophy, a centralized model of governance in which many decisions will no longer be made by those closest to the students, but by someone in the central office.

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This model is common in smaller districts in Texas, but it's anathema to many in HISD, the land of public school choice, where advocates say freeing principals from the mandates of the central office fosters creativity, innovation and produces nationally recognized schools such as Carnegie Vanguard, a magnet, or specialty school, for gifted students.

Of course, critics argue it fosters something else: unaccountability, waste and failure on the part of principals who lack the skill set to wield their power responsibly. District officials argue that while big schools benefited from the system, small ones were left begging for supplemental funds to cover the basics. And the system has produced wide gaps in performance among campuses, with 15 chronic low-performers at risk of takeover for not meeting state requirements.

Carranza's barrage of proposals has left the heads of parents, education advocates and even this columnist, spinning. Perhaps that's the genius of the strategy.

Maybe Mission Impossible is easier when you've got three impossible missions going on at the same time.

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Is this a power grab?

What the final proposals will look like is still unclear. Something firmer is expected next month. But details are needed soon, and a conversation as well.

Ramming through changes of this magnitude, without adequate input of parents, students and other stakeholders, helps no one. And neither do mixed messages about why the changes are happening.

Is centralization, for instance, really about the money? Is it a power grab by the superintendent at an opportune time? Is it truly a better way to achieve equity?

It's hard to tell. District officials give different answers. HISD Chief Financial Officer Rene Barajas says centralizing district control, also known as the FTE or full-time-employee model, is not a response to the district's dire financial situation.

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"The FTE model is not being done because of the budget crisis. It just happens to be being done at the exact same time," Barajas told a group of principals last week in a budget meeting, according to audio obtained of the event.

He went further, entertaining a "Pollyanna" hypothetical, saying even if the Texas Legislature someday decides to adequately fund education, "it's not as though we're going to say 'times are good again, let's go back' " to the current model.

"The superintendent is behind the FTE model because it's bringing equity to campuses that have been historically underfunded, and that's exactly what the FTE is attempting to do, and will do, based on the numbers we've seen."

Barajas maintained that view when I checked with him Friday. But I got the opposite answer when I called HISD board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones to ask if centralization was about money.

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"Correct, that's a response to the budget crisis," she said. "We have enjoyed a luxury model in our district for a long time. … The point isn't whether it's the best model or not. It's just that we can't afford that model. It's just not possible. The dollars aren't there."

'Caught in a Catch-22'

Unlike the magnet changes, which the board must vote on, Skillern-Jones said the superintendent has the power to end decentralization on his own.

She said she wanted taxpayers and voters to be clear that the change is centered around a dire financial situation, caused in part by a broken school finance system in Texas that is not giving schools their fair share. I asked her if centralization in HISD is a choice or a necessity.

"Centralization is a decision I'm in favor of, and I always have been," she said. "But now, we're being forced to make it."

I'm not so sure that's the case. Certainly, HISD is having to make tough choices. And certainly, the state bears much of the blame. But HISD leaders brought on some of it themselves.

In June, for instance, knowing the recapture payment was coming due and crisis was ahead, the board approved $50 million in teacher pay raises. Skillern-Jones defended the decision Friday, saying the raises allowed the district to start the school year fully staffed for the first time in years.

"We were caught in a Catch-22," she said. "Our salaries were not competitive."

A hard choice, to be sure. But there are few easy ones in education these days.

That's why each decision deserves careful consideration - especially major reforms like the ones Carranza is suggesting. It may be good strategy to bundle the proposals and push them as a package deal, but it's not necessarily good policy.

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Lisa Falkenberg is the Chronicle’s vice president/editor of opinion. A two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered Texas for more than 20 years, Falkenberg leads the editorial board and the paper’s opinion and outlook sections, including letters, op-eds and essays.

Falkenberg wrote a metro column at the Chronicle for more than a decade that explored a range of topics, including education, criminal justice and state, local and national politics. In 2015, Falkenberg was awarded the Pulitzer for commentary, as well as the American Society of News Editors’ Mike Royko Award for Commentary/Column Writing for a series that exposed a wrongful conviction in a death case and led Texas lawmakers to reform the grand jury system. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2014.

As opinion editor, she led the editorial board to its first Pulitzer in 2022 for a series of editorials entitled the “Big Lie” exploring how Texas has employed the myth of voter fraud for more than a century to suppress voting and control access to the polls. The following year, she and her team were 2023 Pulitzer finalists for a series of editorials demanding answers and gun reform after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.

Raised in Seguin, Texas, Falkenberg is the daughter of a truck driver and a homemaker, and the first in her family to go to college. She earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. She started her career at The Associated Press, working in the Austin and Dallas bureaus. In 2004, Falkenberg was named Texas AP Writer of the Year.

She joined the Chronicle in 2005 as a roving state correspondent based in Austin.

Falkenberg has mentored journalism students through the Chronicle’s high school journalism program and volunteered with the News Literacy Project. She has been honored by the Texas Legislature, the city of Houston, and has received numerous awards and commendations from state and local organizations and community groups. She completed a year-long program through Hearst Management Institute and a fellowship at Loyola’s Journalist Law School in Los Angeles.

Falkenberg lives in Houston and is the mother of three.