published the contracts that HISD released<\/a> to us. There were references in each contract to eight appendices but the content of the appendices wasn\u2019t included in the material HISD gave us. \u00a0Without that, much of what went into the negotiations \u2014 academic plans, financial planning and oversight, how much HISD would still be involved and with what \u2014 remained a mystery.<\/p>\nOn May 4, when I filed a public information request for the appendices themselves, \u00a0HISD dug in its heels and argued to the Texas Attorney General\u2019s office, that this information shouldn\u2019t be released. That it contained \u201cconfidential information, \u201cinformation related to competition or bidding, agency memoranda\u201d and \u201cinformation involving privacy or property interests of Third Party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost five months later, the AG\u2019s office mentioning that it had waited unsuccessfully for the further information promised by HISD Assistant General Counsel Katheryne Ellison that would justify the secrecy, made its ruling and ordered the district to turn over the requested information to the Houston Press.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a whopper: 772 pages (although some of it is boilerplate, repetitious and in the middle of everything the entire 2025-26 HISD Student Code of Conduct is tossed in there.) Besides academic, marketing and funding plans, each school\u2019s application offers extended bios of the leading staff at the school as well as the non-profit partnership\u2019s administrators. Standards for board training are set and it appears a lot of time will be invested in teaching board members how to do their jobs. You want to know who\u2019s guiding these young minds and running these schools? It\u2019s here. Personal contact information, usually phone numbers, was redacted.<\/p>\n
And actually, there are more than 772 pages. For some reason, the file assembled by HISD did not include any of the in-depth information from HSPVA. Calls, voicemails and emails seeking the missing pages went unanswered by HISD\u2019s Public Information Department. I filed another public information request asking for completion of the first. In the end, with help that did not come from HISD, the Press was able to secure a download of HSPVA\u2019s application from the Texas Education Agency. That\u2019s why the information below appears in three parts.<\/p>\n
All this is more than a one-sitting read. But it gives an interesting and important look at not only these schools\u2019 rules and missions, but how much they plan to rely on their non-profit partnerships with or without much guidance from HISD. <\/p>\n
The evaluators included the recently-departed, former HISD Chief of Strategic Initiatives Orlando Riddick (he left sometime after these contracts were signed), Jacob Johnson, Lizzette Cooper and Caitlin Butler of HISD and former Spring ISD Superintendent Lupita Hinojosa.<\/p>\n
These are top-ranked, A-rated schools who decided to go their own way, seeking the ultimate autonomy the district has to offer. What they have in common is more flexibility in schedules, a lot more field trips and plans to keep their student bodies at certain levels to pay more attention to individual students. Three of them will be part of HISD\u2019s school choice lottery system, HSPVA will not. <\/p>\n
Challenge Early High School is looking for \u201cnon-traditional thinkers\u201d and concentrating on STEM (sciences and math) education. The student body covers the range from \u00a0special ed to emergent bilingual to Gifted and Talented. Many of its students would be the first in their families to attend college. It intends to hold its total student body at 486 students to maintain a smaller class structure and also because it\u2019s on a Houston City College campus which means it is limited in the space available to it. <\/p>\n
Challenge Early College compared what it would have had from HISD in funding and what it would take in under the 1882 funding option which distributes extra money from the state for schools taking this route using outside partnerships.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe comparison \u00a0sheet reflects a total 1882 allocation of $5,173,900 compared with $4,297,864 as an ISD campus, an increase of $876,036. After the 5% administrative fee and \u2026 after subtracting the Menus of Services cost of $866,744, the 1882 option still yields $4,048,461 compared with $3,502,577 \u2013 a net advantage of $545,884.\u201d<\/p>\n
Challenge plans to use the (much-maligned) HISD-generated slides for classroom teaching but make this distinction: \u201cThese HISD planning slide decks are provided as a teacher-facing option and are used intentionally as a template not a script.\u201d<\/p>\n
Houston Academy for International Studies says it aims for \u201chistorically underserved and at risk students,\u201d while promising a rigorous course of study. It focuses preparing students for college and as well as for jobs that will pay a living wage. Its plan includes \u201cscaffolding\u201d which is another term for putting vocabulary in context so kids can understand it.<\/p>\n
This school year it aims for 460 students to grow gradually until 2031 when it expects to have 485 students. <\/p>\n
Kinder High School For the Performing and Visual Arts has 801 students now in a building designed for 750 students. It estimates it will go up to 814 students in the 2027-28 year, but by 2030-31 it plans to be down to 790 and stay at that number. It says since it is a different type of school it is able to handle more students than originally planned but at some point too many destroys their small group approach. \u201cThis is a strategic effort to right-size the campus rather than reduce access.\u201d Selection of incoming students will continue to be based upon artistic auditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an audition-based campus, Kinder HSPVA does not review students\u2019 grades, discipline records, or educational labels during the admissions process; students are selected solely on the quality of their artistic audition,\u201d the application states. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo further advance Kinder HSPVA\u2019s mission of cultivating both artistic and academic excellence, expanded autonomy would support the intentional inclusion of off-campus, site-based learning experiences for both faculty and students,\u201d the school states in its application. <\/p>\n
Energy Institute High School capitalizes on the fact that Houston is an energy capital, and that there should be plenty of jobs ahead for someone in that course of study. They propose a student body of 800; they were below that in the 2025-26 school year when they has a 705 member student body.<\/p>\n
It states that they\u2019ll have an independent audit done of their finances. Unless, they go on to say, they\u2019ll just do an internal one instead. <\/p>\n
In its application, Energy Institute says that it will be working with HISD to determine a fair amount the district should charge it for any service HISD supplies. It points out it it \u201cmay not want to take advantage of district services in areas such as academics and family and community engagement.\u201d Energy Institute has reportedly said that the district has frozen its expected funds it was counting on from the state. So the honeymoon period there is looking a little shaky.<\/p>\n
The contracts last for five years unless something goes incredibly wrong and HISD decides to take the school back under its regular governance.<\/p>\n
These documents may be more than you ever wanted to know. But you have every right to know them. <\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In response to an appeal from the Houston Press, the Texas Attorney General\u2019s Office has ordered Houston ISD…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[155584,7394,39291,155585,4045,226,56,65401,58,1686,57,7334],"class_list":["post-452569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-challenge-early-college-high","tag-charter-schools","tag-energy-institute","tag-hais","tag-hisd","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-houston-academy-for-international-studies","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-isd","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}