Key Agenda Items
What should be happening at the December board meeting?
1. Last June, the HISD Board had to convene for a last-minute special meeting to pass a budget for the 2019 – 2020 school year. In order to prevent another last-minute budget vote next summer, the HISD Board needs to collaboratively and collectively set its budget priorities so the administration can create a budget proposal based on those priorities. The HSID school board needs to map out their priorities and the process for creating the budget based on the LBB analysis of the various programs that were implemented last year.
2. The Houston ISD Board of Education should be editing the language and changes of their in-district charter agreements. If the policies are set at the beginning of the year, the Board should be able to accept charter agreements by the end of the calendar year and approve them in January, avoiding the potential of closing a school in April or May.
3. The HISD Board should terminate their legal actions against the TEA. The Board is using taxpayers’ dollars from unassigned funds, running HISD into a deeper deficit, to pay for their lawyers. So far, the Board has accrued a $147,409.12 bill for their lawyers, which ONLY covers April 2019 through August 2019.
4. The HISD Board should use the recommendations from the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) report to guide their budget priorities and governance for the upcoming school year.
5. The HISD Board should start looking into partnerships for HISD schools that may be Improvement Required (IR) in the following year.