Bianca Seward/Houston Public Media
Port Houston Elementary Protest
A dozen parents rallied in front of Port Houston Elementary on Friday to protest Houston ISD’s proposal to close the school and transition students to Pleasantville Elementary a little more than a mile away.
The East Houston school is one of 12 that have been recommended for closure in 2026-27 by the administration of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles, who cited continued enrollment declines and aging infrastructure. The HISD board of managers is expected to vote on the proposal at its next meeting Feb. 26.
The parents at Port Houston on Friday chanted in Spanish, “Schools are the heart of the community,” and, “We will never be defeated, for Houston united!”
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Mia Miller’s daughter is a fifth-grader at Port Houston and has attended the elementary school since pre-kindergarten. MIller says the proposal to close Port Houston is “outrageous.” She says she doesn’t believe district administrators have fully considered how much the school means to the community.
“They’re just like, ‘It’s in a poor neighborhood. Oh, it’s an old school. We are just going to shut it down,'” Miller said.
Miller says she doesn’t know where she will send her daughter if the school closes.
Cindy Cura is the vice president of Port Houston’s PTO and has two kids currently enrolled. Cura says she found out the school may close by watching the livestream of the last HISD school board meeting.
“I was crying,” Cura said, “because this is our school. This is our family. [It’s] more than a school. We feel like this is our [home].”
She added the primary language for parents of Port Houston Elementary students is Spanish. The Texas Tribune reports 95% of the student population is Hispanic, and 65% have limited English proficiency.
Cura says the teachers at Port Houston have worked to cross language barriers and find solutions for any communication issues.
“We love this school because it’s a Hispanic community,” Cura said.
Caught off guard
At the school board meeting earlier this month, Miles surprised many by proposing that the board approve the closure or consolidation of 12 schools.
Last summer, Miles said he would be bringing a list of schools recommended for closure at the end of the year, citing aging infrastructure and steady year-to-year dips in enrollment. However, in December, he announced to the board that he put a pause on planned closures while adding that some consolidations could still be considered.
“I have resisted bringing something to the board for three years, and the reason why is because I feel that schools should be community schools,” Miles said Feb. 12 to the board. “[But] I can’t justify keeping kids in a school with some of the pictures you’re seeing or [in a school that] has an air-conditioning unit that goes out all the time or can’t be heated.”
The board of managers has not yet voted to accept the proposal. However, on Thursday, teachers at at least one of the affected schools received a survey asking where they’d like to be relocated to if they are retained. The survey says “eligible” employees will be “guaranteed placement” within the district for the upcoming school year and that preferences will be “considered” but not “guaranteed.” The survey also says placements will be determined on “certification, district needs, and available vacancies.”
Brad Wray is a special education teacher at McReynolds Middle School, one of the schools on the proposed closures and consolidations list. Wray says district leaders visited his campus in the fall.
“I figured this is what they were up to but I hoped it wasn’t,” Wray said. “Tough decisions have to be made, but to lie to the community and make these types of decisions without input from the parents, students, and communities they are affecting is disrespectful. Now with less than 2 weeks before a vote, having community meetings where the district is saying, ‘Here’s what we’re doing, deal with it,’ is disrespectful.”
Houston ISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bianca Seward/Houston Public Media
A child holds up a sign at a protest outside Port Houston Elementary on Feb. 20, 2026. The school is one of 12 that have been recommended for closure or consolidation next year by Houston ISD.
Local Houston leaders have also expressed frustration over a lack of community engagement about the planned campus closures.
Several of the schools are located in the 18th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee was recently sworn in. Menefee said he’d only heard about the proposal to close schools an hour before it was publicly announced.
“I don’t know how the internal procedures work, but it doesn’t seem like this has been very clearly communicated to folks in the community, and like they’re getting an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process,” Menefee said to the board. “My ask to y’all would be to slow down and allow people to come up here, to have their voice heard, and to make this process feel like it’s more collaborative.”
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a fellow Democrat who represents the 29th Congressional District in Houston, also said there has been a lack of parent participation and worries about the kinds of schools that are on the proposed list.
“We’re outraged and we’re already getting calls,” Garcia said. “Most of the schools, of course, are minority schools. It just seems like those are always the targets that the minority schools are ones that have the most difficulty with transportation, the most difficulty with being able to buy their lunch.”
During the 2023-24 school year, nearly 62% of HISD’s 183,000-plus students were Hispanic, more than 21% were Black and nearly 10% were white, according to demographical information compiled by The Texas Tribune. Nearly 80% of all HISD students that school year were considered economically disadvantaged.
Losses in enrollment and funding
During his presentation to the board this month, Miles acknowledged the schools with the worst facility condition index, the measure of a building’s overall condition, were concentrated in lower-income areas. A school’s FCI score was part of the overall assessment used to recommend a school for closure.
“What bothers me most now is that our schools, that have the highest FCI – the poorest facilities – are our underserved population,” Miles said. “And that breaks my heart, because I think they should be community schools, but they’ve been losing enrollment for a long time, and the facility isn’t working.”
The district has suffered from steady enrollment declines over the last several years. A recent report from the University of Houston found those declines have accelerated since the state takeover, which was initiated in 2023 because one high school received a string of failing academic ratings from the state. In the 2013-14 school year, HISD had more than 214,000 students. Enrollment this year is approximately 168,000.
Student enrollment is directly tied to state funding. Miles told the board the district is losing approximately $50-$60 million annually in state funding due to enrollment declines. The district is built to accommodate more than 200,000 students, and there are several fixed costs that are not lowered when enrollment dips.
Data included in Miles’ presentation show 23% of HISD schools are operating below 50% of their capacity. The district also reports the cost of rebuilding a single elementary school is approximately $75 million and renovating an elementary school could cost $40 million.
Toni Templeton, one of the authors for a recent study from the University of Houston that showed sharper enrollment declines since the state takeover of HISD, said other districts have also chosen to close schools that aren’t being used to their full capacity as a way to ease the budget.
“The operating cost, or the fixed costs associated with operating those buildings, are much higher than the funding formulas are generating dollars to fund,” Templeton said.
The parents at Port Houston said they hope Miles will hear their concerns and keep their school open. Cura said many parents are worried about walking their students to Pleasantville Elementary. They plan to host a walk Monday morning from Port Houston to Pleasantville to show how difficult the new journey to school would be for many families.