Community Voices for Public Education

Say no to school closures this Thursday (2/26) at the sham board meeting. No accountability, no sale!
These closures are anti democratic. Sign up to speak today.
www.houstoncvpe.org/bom022626

Governor Says Free Speech Matters. Only If You Agree With Him Promoting community-led school reform to strengthen our public school system

The TX governor promotes far-right partisan political groups like Turning Point in public schools but calls peaceful protest “political indoctrination." Free speech for him but not for thee.
www.houstoncvpe.org/governor_say...

Exclusive: Mike Miles helped broker nearly $1M charter school consulting deal HISD Superintendent Mike Miles helped broker a nearly $1M contract for HISD-style reform at a Texas charter network. Experts say it raises concerns.

“Miles used his private Gmail during those talks, emails show, sending a proposal with the consulting firm’s cost breakdowns; flagging a major price increase; and directing where contract documents should be sent.”

Gift link: www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

HISD Meetings: Why Some CTE Courses Will Be Scrapped - Houston Press HISD is poised to drop some CTE courses and move career training at 9 schools to a central location.

“Parents at nine Houston ISD high schools beginning today and throughout the week will hear why HISD believes it’s going to be better for their kids to be bused to the Barbara Jordan Career Center than to spend their entire days at their home schools.”

www.houstonpress.com/news/hisd-me...

Year in review: Decisions that reshaped Houston ISD in 2025 Discover the impact of sweeping reforms and community tension on Houston ISD as it navigates teacher morale, academic priorities, and state takeover.

Six moments defined HISD in 2025: trustees elected but still no voting power, takeover commission established, disputed “gains,” City Hall scrutiny of Miles’ data, a $2.1B budget w/deep inequities & loss of wraparound services.Miles has lost public trust.

defendernetwork.com/news/educati...

Join CVPE for caroling before the HISD BOM on Thu Dec 11. Caroling at 4 pm and BOM at 5 pm at 4400 W 18th St. Make your speech longer by signing up and signing in with a friend. Bring bells and tambourines. Sign up to speak Dec 8 after 5 pm to Dec 10 at noon.

Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Disillusionment and Cost - Network For Public Education Part I: Decline, the first installment of a three-part report, Charter School Reckoning,  presents sobering findings on the stagnation, retrenchment, and accelerating closures plaguing the charter school sector as it enters its fourth decade. The report, published by the National Center for Charter School Accountability, documents that in the first half of 2025 alone, 50 […]

There is no Charter School “million-student waitlist.”

There are empty classrooms, declining enrollment, and schools closing mid-year. #CharterMythBusted

Stop the waste. Start the reckoning.
Read our new report #CharterSchoolReckoning to learn more networkforpubliceduc...

New Report ➡️ THE STORIES BEHIND THE STATISTICS: Why a Report on "Large Achievement Gains" in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans' Black Students by KRISTEN BURAS, PH.D networkforpubliceduc...

Stop Trump and McMahon From Destroying the Department of Education - Send your email today to stop the destruction of a Department that supports our schools and our students.
We make it easy w/ action network actionnetwork.org/le...

Today is Giving Tuesday, an important day for small nonprofits like ours. Every donation helps us continue fighting for strong public schools and against this harmful takeover.
Donate today at HoustonCVPE.org/donate_501c3

Forbes data shows big gap in giving among Houston billionaires Across the nation, according to Forbes, three-quarters of the nation's wealthiest men and women have given away less than 5% of their wealth. These Houston billionaires have been more generous.

The Arnold $$$ back ending public pensions, replacing elected school boards w/state control, & expanding charters, reforms that worsen inequity. We need investment in under-resourced communities and joyful schools where children love learning.
www.houstonchronicle.com/business/art...

Turning Point USA talked expansion with Texas education chief The meeting happened days before Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pledged $1 million to help establish chapters of the conservative student group on every Texas college and high school campus.

Texas education chief Mike Morath quietly met with Turning Point USA about expanding the group into every Texas high school, days before Dan Patrick pledged $1M to make it happen.

www.texastribune.org/2025/11/25/t...

Who is in Mike Miles' cabinet? See HISD's top officials, all with pay over $200K State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles has seen some recent turnover in his cabinet.

Annual HISD Fat Cat Bureaucrat list

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

HISD spent $1.3 million on public affairs consulting Houston ISD does not list Bryson Gillette among its consulting services expenses.

HISD spent $1.3 million on consultants while the bond failed — money meant for kids, not PR firms like Bryson Gillette.
Speak out Thursday about the wickedness of wasting public ed dollars and the lies Miles keeps spinning.
Sign up: houstoncvpe.org/events
👉 www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Houston's Top Magnet High Schools Could Become Private Partnership Charter Schools, Raising Equity Concerns Texas' largest school district may even convert its renowned performing arts institution under a program that benefitted the state-appointed superintendent in his previous career.

“these (SB 1882 ) partnerships—including schools run by the nonprofit that Miles formerly led—fall under a law for in-district charter schools that contains far fewer financial and academic guardrails than apply to other charters or public schools.

www.texasobserver.org/houston-magn...

Election Day is today.
Audrey, Maria, and Michael will stand up to Mike Miles and fight for our kids.

HISD’s Sterling High School’s marching band makes history with performance Sterling High School’s marching band qualified this year to compete in UIL Area — the equivalent of the "playoffs" — for the first time in the school’s 60-year history.

Vote for our kids today!
Sterling’s band shows what true success looks like, students growing through music, teamwork, and joy. The kind of learning missing from Mike Miles’s dystopian equation.

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

No Kings in Our Schools: What Texas Teaches the Nation About Right Wing Power and Public Education Texas Governor Greg Abbott has forcibly taken over Fort Worth ISD. In October 2025, the Texas Education Agency officially booted Fort Worth’s democratically elected school board and replaced it wit…

No Kings in Our Schools: What Texas Teaches the Nation About Right-Wing Power and Public Education
cloakinginequity.com/2025/10/27/n...

HISD Selling Off Schools | Ft Worth ISD takeover |Take Action Promoting community-led school reform to strengthen our public school system

Mike Miles is trying to carve up HISD, starting with 1882 charter deals at “boutique” schools like HSPVA and Energy. No one asked for this. New Orleans 2.0.
Here’s what they’re not telling you. 📷

www.houstoncvpe.org/hisd_selling...

Knowing the stakes, Rose and her classmates at their west-side elementary practiced the drill iust as their teacher instructed. The third graders kept a stack of worksheets tucked underneath their chapter books at all times as they took turns reading aloud with their teacher. At any moment, they knew, their teacher might get an urgent text that district officials were on campus. Rose's mother says a staffer apparently sent alerts using a secret code of emojis to signal which classrooms the officials were coming for.

Rose always placed her book with the open side down so as not to lose her page. She was smitten by the gallant, non-conforming little mouse who takes on the cunning dungeon rats in Kate DiCamillo's book "The Tale of Despereaux." The 8-year-old never thought she'd be part of a daring plot in her own classroom. "I just wanted to read the book,' Rose, now 9, told me in a recent interview.

Books - actual books, with dust jackets spines, whimsical illustrations. and characters and cliffhangers - are ncreasingly unwelcome in the land of worksheets and slide shows. Teachers say that, with few exceptions, the only stories allowed in the early qrades of state-appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles' New Education Svstem are minced into dry text that teachers reac from manuals. The few approved books focus on phonics. f district evaluators had walked into the classroom of Rose and Max last year and found every desk spread with paperbacks, the teacher could have faced reprimand, lost points in her spot review and, if she'd repeated the indiscretion, lost her iob

Not one, not two, but thousands of HISD teachers have lost their jobs under Miles's authoritarian "leadership" because they have dared to buck his requirement to teach the district-created, NES curriculum "with fidelity." How, you ask? Well, they've had the audacity to read real books, sing, draw 🧵

This tragic but excellent article needs to be read by everyone throughout the country. The Republicans want to kill public ed. They are using state takeovers and charter school owning charlatans like Mike Miles (and his abusive NES) to do it. See at what they are stealing from our (soon your) kids!🧵

Houston ISD to control coverage by hiring its own news crew. Another $2M instead of funding teachers or fixing AC.

www.chron.com/news/houston...

HISD lays out 8 priorities for 2025-26 school year. Here's what to know. Houston ISD laid out eight priorities for the 2025-26 school year in its second budget...

🚨 The draft District Improvement Plan is out.
One “key initiative”? Spending an additional $2 million on HISD Now to fight so-called “misinformation” from the press.

Our schools deserve resources for students, not PR spin. 📚✊🏽

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Call out Mike Miles’ harmful policies & data manipulation—fight for every child’s right to learn.
HISD Board of Managers
Thu Oct 9 · 5 PM
4400 W 18th St or Zoom.
Sign-up to speak: Mon 5 PM–Wed noon. Details on our site.

Mike Miles calls HISD parents like me 'extreme' At a Houston City Council meeting, the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD dismissed skeptics as “disgruntled” and talked of “conspiracy theories.”

"This is the real extremism: the dismantling of public education while accusing those who defend it of being radicals."

www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outl...

OfftheKuff is interviewing HISD trustee candidates this week. Today: Felicity Pereyra (D1). CVPE backs Pereyra, Guidry (D9), Benzon (D5), MICHAEL McDonough (D6), Nath (D7). End the takeover, restore real learning. www.offthekuff.com/wp/?p=120420

Miles just rolled out his fifth new spot form in two months. Now worth 18 points instead of 15 — and retroactive. Constant rule-changes don’t just punish teachers, they destabilize classrooms and harm kids.

Harris County Democrats issue first endorsements in HISD trustee elections The Harris County Democratic Party issued its first-ever endorsement of candidates running in HISD trustee elections, citing the "high stakes facing Houston’s schools."

The Harris County Democratic Party issued its first-ever endorsements of candidates running in the Houston ISD trustee elections, citing the “high stakes facing Houston’s schools in the wake of the state takeover.”

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Sign up now!

Join the Kids Picket with Hilton workers on strike!
📍 Hilton Americas | Sat 9/20, 9–11AM app.sosha.ai/s/nEW8TR3R

Tell us: How do you feel about HISD? Does Mike Miles deserve a bonus? Houston ISD's controversial superintendent is eligible for an annual bonus of up to $231K. How would you rate him?

Only 5 people have submitted feedback on Miles’ bonus .

Got something to say? Scroll to tge bottom and click on the red button m, add your contribution.

www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outl...