​In May 2023, Governor Greg Abbott announced the state's takeover of Houston ISD, the culmination of a four-year legal battle to save locally elected control of the district. What followed was an affront to democracy in Harris County with elected school board leaders stripped of their positions and local voters disregarded. Governor Abbott and TEA Commissioner Mike Morath installed an out-of-state charter school executive, Mike Miles, as the new superintendent.

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In the year since, Mike Miles has lost the trust of the Houston community, and he doesn't seem interested in getting it back. Miles has made drastic changes to HISD policies without community input and punished educators in the name of streamlining the district. Miles has grossly expanded both his own power and that of the unaccountable appointed board. 

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Now, Miles–a man with a storied history of mismanaging public funds–is asking Houston taxpayers to foot the bill of the largest school bond in Texas history.

While the state remains mired in yearslong scandal over Texas's special education services, Mike Miles fired the autism services teams who provide critical support to students with disabilities and their teachers. He has slashed wraparound services, services for homeless students, and college access coordinators. He has replaced qualified lifelong educators with uncertified, untrained, and untested fill-ins. That's no way for kids to learn. Mike Miles doesn't care.

This bond election is the only chance our community has to weigh in on the state of HISD. We can't oust a board member whose votes we don't agree with. We can't force Miles to resign when he fires our kids' favorite teachers. Miles doesn't even view public meetings as a chance to hear from the public. If we disagree with him on how these billions in bond dollars are spent, chances are it won't matter. And with $4.4 billion on the line, I don't love those odds. The stakes are too high to put our trust and our money in the hands of Mike Miles.