It can happen, and it may
- This school district has been at risk of state takeover for years. Some blame white flight.
Every weekday, school buses emblazoned with “MUMFORD ISD” roll their way north on a winding farm-to-market road lined by sparse, tractor-dotted fields. They pick up children in neighboring Hearne and take them back to Mumford’s public schools.
Mumford, an unincorporated community 25 miles from College Station, has 300 residents, but its schools have nearly twice as many students — almost all of them live in nine nearby school districts. The highest number comes from Hearne Independent School District.
Hearne ISD administrators and teachers see the Mumford buses around town, constant reminders of what they’re up against. They’ve long insisted — in private and in courtrooms — that the transfers are bleeding them dry financially, sapping them of high-achieving students and contributing to the district’s low performance over the last couple of decades.
For years, Mumford has been a high-performing, racially diverse school district. Meanwhile, Hearne has become a majority black and Hispanic district, and its elementary school has been low performing for longer than almost any school in Texas. Unless Hearne ISD turns things around in the next couple of years, the state will take over the district or forcibly close its elementary school.
- HISD lawyers seek injunction to block TEA takeover, allow superintendent search.
Lawyers for Houston ISD’s school board have asked a federal judge to preemptively stop the Texas Education Agency from stripping power from the district’s elected trustees and allow board members to select a permanent superintendent, the latest maneuver in a growing legal battle between the district and state.
In a motion filed Tuesday, the HISD board’s lawyers argued agency officials have discriminated against voters in predominantly black and Hispanic cities, overstepped their authority in suspending the district’s superintendent search and misinterpreted a new state law that requires dramatic intervention in districts with long-struggling schools.
The filing comes as TEA officials are on the brink of finalizing their investigation into allegations of trustee misconduct and ruling on an appeal of Wheatley High School’s seventh consecutive failing grades — with both outcomes expected to trigger the ouster of HISD’s elected school board in the coming months.
