Black youth protest TEA takeover

By Laura Onyeneho

Te fre alarm rings just afer 10 a.m., and hundreds of Worthing High School students walk out of their school building and onto the streets in solidarity against the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) decision to take over Houston ISD on April 6.

TEA states that board of managers candidates now move to the next phase of preliminary applicant screening. Te entire process will include detailed applicant reviews, community reference and background checks, training and interviews.

The agency will open an additional application window to allow more people in the community to consider serving during the applicant screening phase, an idea that Anderson is very skeptical about.

“If you’re going to select from round one applicants, why would they want to leave it open after stressing the deadline for applications to be turned in in the frst place?” she said. “The commissioner is the only person who can answer the questions we have and he hasn’t met with the people who are going to be the most afected, and that is the employees of HISD.”

Te demonstrations were planned to coincide with the TEA’s deadline day to apply to serve on the board of managers.

Community members distributed petition fyers, waved signs and updated others about the takeover.

TEA hosted four public forums a few weeks ago to share information about the takeover process. Te forums lef many unanswered questions on the table and increased the community’s distrust of TEA due to what parents and community members are deeming a lack of clarity from the state.

Students chanted, “Save Our School” and “TEA, go Away” as they came out in droves, excited to fght for a cause.

“Our voices matter too,” said one student who chose not to be named. “Has the TEA asked us how we felt?”

Micah Gabay is a Worthing High School student actively engaged during city-wide community rallies and forums. She told the Defender that one of her concerns is regarding conversations around school vouchers and how they will impact lower-income students in the school district.

“Most kids who go to public schools can’t aford a private school,” said Gabay. “So, they basically are trying to take us over and push us out of the public school and into the private schools, and we can’t aford that.”

Gabay hopes the TEA prioritizes visits to the schools and listens to the students and educators whom the decisions of the new board of managers will ultimately impact.

“[TEA] doesn’t really come into the schools and fnd out anything about the schools,” she said. “All they do is they see what happened before, and they just think, ‘Oh no, that school is bad; we need to change that completely.’”

Parents and students from more than 30 HISD elementary, middle and high schools participated in the day of action protest led by Houston non-proft Community Voices for Public Education. Elementary school protests began around 7:15 a.m., Middle school and high school protests started around 8:15 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., respectively.