For years during her turn as a Houston ISD school board member, Jolanda Jones regularly railed against “inequities” — the unequal offerings at the district’s schools – paying particular attention to the lack of libraries at many HISD schools, usually in poorer neighborhoods.
Jones, now a Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, had to be nodding her head in vigorous agreement with the announcement by newish Superintendent Millard House III last week that in his five-year strategic plan there will be a library, counselor and nurse in every school. How do you carve out room for a library or a nurse’s office or a counselors’ office if you’ve never had one? Even if you’ve had a library, have its space and hours been “repurposed” for teacher meetings or administration assessment drop-ins?
And then there are the students at all levels with problems, not always of their own making, who need someone to talk with privately – something that can’t happen in the middle of a class. In two weeks, Superintendent House says he will present more details of his plans to the HISD school board. It will be a long meeting, with a lot of questions, not all friendly. Clearly there will be pushback from some principals who'll see this as the slippery slope to the end of decentralized school governance, who'll say they know more than any just-arrived superintendent about what is needed at their particular school.