HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Earlier this year, Houston Independent School District’s Superintendent Mike Miles made a big announcement: Due to a drop in student population, he said the district had to close schools.
“Any school that has fewer than 300 students, we are subsidizing, we aren’t maintaining, we can’t run that school at a break-even, we are losing even. And it’s not only a financial equation, but at some point, it is a financial equation when you have a lot of small schools,” Miles said in February.
In February, Miles said he would present a list of schools for consideration to the board of managers by December, but just weeks shy of that deadline, he suddenly reversed course with no explanation.
The district said the announcement was made on Wednesday during a principal’s meeting. ABC13 asked for additional details on why this decision was made, but the district said it would not answer any additional questions.
Miles told the principals in that meeting that consolidations may still happen in the future, but it won’t be in the 2026-27 school year.
“No, it’s not a surprise to me,” Jackie Anderson, President of the Houston Teachers ‘ Union, said.
Anderson said she believes the reversal is due to blowback from the community after being left out of the conversation.
“There is a way to work with the community, with the stakeholders, with the taxpayers to come to decisions about what school is going to be displaced, somebody is going to be displaced. And to make those decisions without any community input, to me, is a little egregious,” Anderson said.
This back-and-forth comes as HISD has seen the student population drop year to year.
In 2019, data from the Texas Education Agency shows there were 209,040 students in the district. By 2025, the TEA data showed there were 176,039 students, a drop of 33,001 students over just six years.
These enrollment numbers are reported to the state every October in order for districts to secure funding. In years past, Eyewitness News has had no problem obtaining those October reports for enrollment.
This year, HISD is keeping them secret, refusing to release them despite ABC13 asking for them and submitting formal open records requests.
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