Earlier this month, Houston ISD’s state-installed Board of Managers approved putting a $4.4 billion bond, the largest in state history, before voters this November. HISD leadership, all appointed as part of the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of the district, says the bond will be used to fund campus rebuilds, fix faulty air systems, implement more school security upgrades, and other improvements.
Then again, TEA’s hand-picked superintendent, Mike Miles, has said a lot of things in his yearlong tenure. They do not always match what he does, as mentioned in the resolution of no confidence ratified by Houston Federation of Teachers members in May.
It should be of little surprise that HISD voters lack confidence that the district will use taxpayer funds properly, especially as lingering questions remain about Miles’ financial dealings with the charter school network he founded.
New polling data commissioned by our union bears out this voter distrust:
- Only 39% of voters support “a property tax increase in Houston Independent School District to fund $4.4 billion in bonds to update and repair HISD buildings and for new technology.”
- 77% don’t trust Miles to manage HISD funds — including 51% of base Republicans — and 58% believe he is corrupt.
- Only 19% of HISD voters support the TEA takeover of HISD, which replaced the elected school board with Mike Miles and other state-appointed managers; only 13% of voters believe Miles’ takeover has improved local schools.
- 77% of voters agree that “the solution to struggling schools is for the state to increase public education funding, not to replace our local elected leaders with Abbott allies and then increase local taxes.”
Since last June when Miles, the former superintendent of Dallas ISD and the founder of Colorado-based charter school network Third Future Schools, installed by TEA as the superintendent of Houston ISD, the district has plunged into a downward spiral. Since then, HISD has lost 4,700 teachers and more than 10,000 employees overall in a period of tumult marked by unceremonious firings, sweeping layoffs, and teachers resigning in protest of Miles’s ineffective and punitive new policies.
Despite this, Miles is still asking voters to approve the $4.4 billion bond, while he simultaneously cuts $500 million from HISD’s budget for the 2024-25 school year. He is asking community members and voters to trust him. And the latest polling data we have shows they unequivocally do not.
“Houston voters see through Mike Miles’s sham leadership, and this new poll proves it,” said Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT. “Mike Miles had a year to build trust with educators, parents, and the community. He failed miserably. Trust is broken, and Mike Miles has no business asking taxpayers for a single cent.”