HISD trustees bemoan dropouts, prepare for budget
By STEVE MARK
Updated: 06.09.09
HISD Board President Larry Marshall attended five district graduation ceremonies and ended the ceremonial caravan with a striking and singular observation.
“It’s clear that 50 percent of the people enrolled in ninth-grade were not there for their celebrations at some of the schools,” Marshall said at last week’s board workshop.
Marshall pleaded with fellow board members “If we’d just come out of denial and admit we have a problem.”
Marshall’s comments came in the wake of recent findings by the group Children at Risk, and publicized by Houston City Councilman and mayoral hopeful Peter Brown, reflecting that only 58.5 percent of area high school freshmen graduate within six years.
”It is time for middle school intervention,” said board member Paula Harris. “Our elementary schools get it. There’s a deep intervention we need to get into. Looking at the data, we’re seeing a drop right when they leave fifth-grade.”
Others around the boardroom see the graduation glass half-full.
“It looks like what I’ve seen this weekend is that a corner is being turned,” said board member Natasha Kamrani, who said she noticed a sharp increase in graduation attendance at Davis High School compared to previous years.
Soaking in the distress was outgoing Supt. Abelardo Saavedra. “There’s some significant growth in the number of kids walking that stage,” said Saavedra, who recently attended some nationwide seminars and has been asked by the HISD board for more data on district graduation rates.
“We need to negate what Councilman Peter Brown is saying,” said Harris.
Official data or not, Marshall had enough of a sampling this weekend to reinforce his own conclusions.
‘What I heard (at some schools) is that you had 35 or 40 percent of the original class,” said Marshall. “Our goal is to see a 90 percent graduation rate for kids who enter high school.”
Other numbers — budget figures — were also the discussion of the day. The district’s chief financial officer, Melinda Garrett, wants to have a budget plan by this week’s board meeting, knowing that her eventual budget might have line items shifted a bit. Figures generated from House Bill 3646 from the 81st Texas Legislature is still subject to Texas Education Agency approval, based on still-to-be-interpreted language derived by the stimulus bill.
The element of uncertainty is over what TEA funds will actually come from the stimulus plan.
“The conflict is, once we know what our portion is, there’s a federal tag on it,” said Garrett. “Are they (TEA) going to give us a directive of what stimulus money moves over?”
HISD has already been chosen as a test audit site for the stimulus money. Garrett warned the board Thursday that “We are going to have to hire additional monitoring people. We’re going to have to tie back every dollar to those federal missions.”
What Garrett is fairly certain of, is the expected increase in teacher compensation as a by-product of HB 3646. Factoring in the yearly Weighted Average Daily Attendance (WADA), across-the-board teacher pay raises could average $970 per year.
In that respect Garrett warned, again, of the current funding uncertainty and the timetable of when outlines from the state will be finalized. “Our ability to issue salary stability under these mandates is limited.”