The fight over the future of Houston’s public school system escalated this week when the local teachers union joined a federal voting rights lawsuit against the state. The legal challenge is part of a last-ditch effort to stop the state government from taking indefinite control of Texas’ biggest and most diverse public school district.
“This seems more like a power grab and almost akin to a political coup than a political governance system,” Zeph Capo, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 6,500 HISD employees, told the Observer.
On Tuesday, his union filed a motion contending that the state’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District is unconstitutional. A takeover means that the state will replace HISD’s elected school board members and the superintendent with its own appointees, giving the Republican-appointed state bureaucrats tremendous power to implement changes without any clear sort of accountability. Plaintiffs say that if the state replaces the elected members of the board, Houston residents will be deprived of their right to elect local representation, an act that they say disenfranchises and discriminates based on race and national origin.
