During much of its first year and a half of service, Houston ISD’s state-appointed school board has endured criticism for what some community members derided as a tight-lipped, opaque approach to district governance.

Now, the board has made an unusual admission: Its critics may have been right.

HISD’s board in September awarded itself just 1 out of 10 possible points on a section of its annual self-evaluation that measured “advocacy and engagement,” records published this week show. Members said the board failed to meet several benchmarks over the past year, including hosting community meetings across high school feeder patterns and having students participate in training sessions about board procedures.

The low evaluation doesn’t trigger any disciplinary processes, such as firing board members or requiring more training. It does, however, suggest an awareness from board members, who replaced HISD’s elected leaders in June 2023 amid a controversial state takeover of the district, of shortcomings with including community members in decision-making. 

The grade also comes on heels of a decisive vote against a $4.4 billion HISD bond package, the clearest indicator yet that a large swath of the community is dissatisfied with the district’s leadership.

“It is an acknowledgement that we need to do better,” Board Member Cassandra Auzenne Bandy said.

Part of the improvement will come from following a “Community Engagement Action Plan” that the board approved in May, Bandy said. The plan encourages members to hold meetings with groups of 10 to 20 community stakeholders following a “shared script” that largely centers discussion around student data, rather than other aspects of district operations that have been subject to community criticism, such as high employee turnover. 

The board has completed 25 such meetings since May, Bandy said.

The document asserts that the board should seek feedback from voices other than those who speak during board meetings — which have been largely critical of district leadership — because speakers “may not be a representative sample of the community.” 

“The problem we’re trying to solve with our new community engagement strategy is, ‘How do we do better?’” said Bandy, who co-chairs the committee on engagement. “It’s not going to be sitting in a room and getting yelled at, or exchanging emails back and forth with someone that’s angry, just for them to post on Facebook.”

Board President Audrey Momanaee said the board will “redouble” its efforts on engagement. Despite the scripted approach to the small community meetings, there’s still room for general discussion, she said.

“The shared script is really … so that we’re sharing the same information with folks,” Momanaee said. “But that doesn’t mean the reactions can’t be different or the follow-up conversation isn’t different.”

In addition to engagement, the board’s self-evaluation included grades on several other parts of board operations, with most of the possible points hinging on how well the body focused its work around student learning outcomes. 

Overall, the board awarded itself 53 out of 100 points, with higher marks on goal-setting processes and lower marks on “synergy and teamwork,” among other areas. In the 2023-24 school year, HISD roughly doubled the number of top-rated campuses and cut the number of low-rated campuses by two-thirds, according to accountability grades released by the district that remain unofficial due to ongoing legal challenges.

Momanaee and Bandy described the self-grading process as a way to take stock of board successes and find areas for improvement. The Texas Education Agency has tasked the board with improving its operations as one of several requirements before it can end its intervention in the district. In the years before the state takeover, HISD’s board was plagued by dysfunction, with members publicly airing grievances on livestreams and social media.

Now, Bandy hopes the board can channel the community’s high level of attention on HISD into productive dialogue.

“Had the same level of engagement been around just five years ago, would we even be under intervention?” Bandy said. “I would like to see that community engagement energy be put at solving problems and finding solutions and coming together at the table to come up with something.”

Asher Lehrer-Small covers Houston ISD for the Landing. Find him @by_ash_ls on Instagram and @small_asher on X, or reach him directly at asher@houstonlanding.org.

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