HISD board votes to close 3 schools if they don't improve

HISD trustees voted 8-1 yesterday to shut down three of the district's worst-performing schools next summer if the schools don't improve test scores and keep students from dropping out. The three schools — Kashmere High, Sam Houston High and McReynolds Middle School — are three of the lowest-performing in the state; according to state accountability ratings released last week, Kashmere and Sam Houston were the only schools in Texas to earn "academically unacceptable" ratings for four consecutive years. McReynolds wasn't far behind, one of five schools statewide that ranked near the bottom three years in a row.

HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra announced the plan to close the schools last week, and it was immediately met with resistance from students, alumni and parents who said the underperforming schools can't improve because HISD neglects them. In a stunning bit of logic, state Rep. Harold Dutton said students at Kashmere High are actually doing very well, but somehow all the other students in the district are bringing them down: "Kashmere is low performing because we have too many people in HISD who are low performing, he said. "These students are actually excelling in spite of what HISD is doing." Also vowing to fight the closures is U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who must have suspected that there would be television cameras at yesterday's school board meeting: "No way over our dead bodies are you going to be able to close Kashmere," Jackson Lee told board members.

Opposition is coming from people more directly involved with the schools, too, including Sam Houston teacher Myron Greenfield. "I implore the board to reconsider the motion to close our school and our sister schools, because it's a little like suicide," he told the board. "It's a permanent act to a temporary solution." HISD has developed improvement plans for the schools to try to increase their academic ratings and keep them open; the plans include frequent testing, luring top-rank teachers with pay bonuses and reducing class sizes. But if that doesn't work, it's HISD's job to close the campuses and get the students into better schools, trustee Natasha Kamrani, who represents Sam Houston, said. "We cannot afford to keep schools that aren't doing their job open year after year after year after year and continue to come up with excuses for why we need more time," she said.

If all three of the schools close, about 4,000 students would have to be moved to other campuses.