Is Grier’s Honeymoon with HISD Board Over? (TX)

February 17, 2011

Eighteen months ago, the nine members of the Houston school board each heape d praised on Terry Grier, the San Diego transplant they had hired to transform Texas’ largest school district.

"We are in for a tremendous ride," board member Greg Meyers said at the time.

With Grier’s rapid rollout of changes, that ride at times has been bumpy. It’s likely to get rougher as the district faces massive cuts in state funding, and three new board members have become increasingly critical of the superintendent they didn’t have a hand in selecting.

"It appears that the honeymoon’s over," said Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon, who has observed board and superintendent relationships in the Houston Independent School District for three decades.

Grier, who will deliver his second annual State of the Schools speech today, isn’t likely to bow to critics who want him to slow down.

"Sometimes I worry we’ve not moved fast enough," Grier said in an interview this week. "Children only have one time in school."

Grier, speaking to business leaders, educators and other paying guests in a hotel ballroom, will tout efforts to create new job evaluations for teachers and principals and to better prepare students for college.

His plan includes giving all high school juniors the option of taking the SAT college-entrance exam during class time and allowing seniors at select high schools to earn a two-year associate’s degree through online community college courses.

The in-class SAT program will cost HISD up to $130,000 if all juniors participate, according to district officials. Plans for the online associate’s degree are still in the works, and n o price tag was available Wednesday.

HISD Trustee Mike Lunceford, who joined the board a year ago, said he hopes Grier focuses on the looming budget problems. Early estimates from the state’s worst-case budget proposal show HISD could lose $202 million to $348 million — up to 20 percent of its yearly budget.

"There’s been a lot of changes," said Lunceford. "I’d like to hear him say that until we really know what our budgets are, we’re not going to have any drastic changes in any programs because we don’t know what we are or are not going to be able to afford."

$1.6 million expansion

Lunceford, along with Trustees Carol Mims Galloway, Anna Eastman and Juliet Stipeche, last week voted against expanding Grier’s signature school reform program, Apollo 20.

The trustees questioned the $1.6 million cost of expanding the program to 11 elementary schools and the rush to do it now when final results aren’t in from the inaugural year, which involves five middle schools and four high schools.

The district has yet to raise enough private money to cover the $20 million cost of the current program, which is pricier because it includes a longer school day and year, in addition to special math tutoring and Saturday classes.

Eastman said Grier’s emphasis on the Apollo program troubles her, as it only serves about 7,000 of HISD’s 202,000 students.

"I’m really concerned about his constant focus on a very small number of schools," Eastman said.

Eastman, Lunceford and Stipeche were not on th e board when Grier was hired in September 2009.

Board president for plan

Paula Harris, the board president, said she supports Grier’s Apollo program and his efforts to get more students to take college-caliber Advancement Placement exams, but she wants to see student achievement results at the end of this school year.

Grier had been on the job only about six months when students took state exams last spring. Those results generally showed small gains, with the improvement mirroring the state average.

In 2010, for example, 27 percent of HISD students scored at the "commended" level on the state’s math exam, up one point from the prior year, state data show.

Harris said she wants to see big progress this year, now that Grier has his staff in place. He replaced numerous top-level administrators and school principals and hired more novice teachers from Teach for America.

"Everything’s going to be based on, are the people that he put in place getting it done?" Harris said, adding that the results Grier gets matter more than his oft-brash personality. "He’s not out to make friends."