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HISD is considering making changes to the transportation made available to students in its successful magnet programs. Unfortunately, these changes seem to be part of a terribly compressed timetable between proposal, discussion, and decision. Very few pertinent facts and analyses are being presented to students and parents by HISD. Finally, HISD is presenting these changes as an opportunity to reduce expenses, but is not giving a commitment on how those savings may be applied elsewhere. For these reasons, I think HISD should not try at this time to make changes to transportation; instead, they should consider starting a discussion and deliberation process which will frame these changes as part of a plan to support, strengthen, and extend the magnet programs. To put this into a bigger context, they should also discuss the expense reductions available in other parts of the budget, and should plan for implementation no earlier than the 2010-2011 school year.
The timetable. It seems a bad idea to rush through a decision process which has the potential to negatively affect almost 3,400 students directly, and possibly 11,000 students overall (the total population of the magnet programs). These students and their families, who are among other things citizens and taxpayers, deserve more consideration than they seem to be receiving during this process. Surely these stakeholders should receive more than an opportunity to "be heard"; the process should be more collaborative and consultative, and should be slowed down so each group participating can receive good information and make informed decisions.
The information. There has been a lot of information (data?) flying around, but not enough of it identified as directly from HISD, or available from their web site. Faced with a proposal which affects such a large community, HISD should seriously consider creating a web site with at least the proposals and an impact analysis. At best would be community oriented tools, such as at least a feedback form so people can contact HISD and ask for more information and/or discuss how the proposed change might impact them.
I would like to see, for example: how many students will be affected at each magnet program? what are the demographics of the affected students (aggregate age, economic, geographic, ethnic/racial information)? How does that compare to the populations of the whole magnet program and the district? Is any sub-group going to be impacted disproportionately? What provisions will be available for families which cannot adjust to the new regime?
The bigger context. I have not heard enough about how these changes fit into the plan for either the magnet programs in general, or the overall HISD budget at large. If these proposed economies would be applied back to the magnet schools and programs, where will they go? Will existing programs get expanded? Failing programs get more resources? New programs established? In what proportion? And is that a firm commitment?
If this is instead about cost reductions, it's not clear that saving $8 - $9 million in an overall annual budget of $1.6 billion is going to have much effect. If the issue here really is a concern that falling property values will lead to lower taxes and a smaller HISD budget, then where are the significant reductions going to come from? How many students will those changes affect? Given the magnitude of the possible savings and the number of students involved, is this proposal reasonable?
Perhaps students, teachers, families, and staff might feel better about participating in this process if HISD were to commit to its magnet programs, to promise that any changes would affect the smallest possible number of students and families, and that families which demonstrably can't cope with the changes will not be left behind or forced to exit their chosen programs. It appears that HISD needs to go a long way to establish trust with its constituents, and should consider how to take advantage of every possible opportunity to do so.
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