Houston ISD does something right, yet again! (Also, I'm proficient in the art of sarcasm)

Auditors from Magnet Schools of America recently came out with a report concerning HISD’s various Magnet programs. In this already highly controversial report, the auditors propose that Magnet standing – and funding – of approximately half of such schools participating be cut by the end of next school year. A total of 55 out of 113 schools, including Bellaire, Lamar, and Westside, would become regular neighborhood schools, while other programs such as DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Barbara Jordan High School for Careers, and High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice would remain magnet and receive increased funding.
The level of hypocrisy in this report is incredible. Pages and pages are spent glorifying the wonders of making available tens of different programs for interested students, before MSA (Magnet Schools of America) switches tactics altogether and swears by the fact that every school need to be good enough so that students will be satisfied with their own neighborhood schools. The report claims that it needs funds to further availability of said programs, before slipping in that unless something drastic can be done, it plans on shutting down magnet programs in not only “uninterested” schools, but also overpopulated and often high achieving schools.
One of the most worrisome examples of high achieving schools that will possibly close their doors to magnet students is Bellaire High School, located in a historically white neighborhood and drawing from a vast, recently redistricted area in order to balance diversity.
People want to go to this school. They are crowding it so they can take courses from teachers in subjects they find interesting. Language magnet students are flocking to Bellaire in efforts to learn what they want to learn. This report claims so adamantly that it recognizes the importance of magnet schools as motivation for attendance and high performance. According to the report, the MSA is trying hard to figure out how to better the Magnet schools of Houston. And then, when too many people want to be at such a good school, they’re just going to shut it down entirely, leaving those driven, language-savvy students out in the cold to their often underfunded and uninteresting neighborhood schools.
Bellaire is one of the top schools in not only the district or state, but the country. The high-achieving magnet students contribute to that greatly. It should be shocking to the community that the district is even debating cutting funding from a school that, despite being so lauded, still has many kinks to work out.

By cutting funding at Bellaire, the school board seems to think that will allow other schools the opportunity to find their ways up to a similar level as this esteemed high school, one of the top hundred in the country. What they don’t seem to realize is that it will just bring Bellaire down to the other schools’ levels – considering the quality of our public school system as is, and the level of Bellaire itself, we really can’t afford such a loss on the part of the district.
The report carefully states that it needs to give schools whose magnet programs will be cut time to get used to the new “level of funding” (meaning, lack thereof). However, at the very end of the report it makes mention of how this will be done – after one year (the 2011 school year) at 40% of current funding, magnet-associated funding will be cut altogether. That’s barely enough time, not even considering how under-funded schools are as is.
Also, what about relocation or reinstatement of these programs in other schools? The report makes no mention of what to do with Bellaire’s language program or Lamar’s business program or Lee’s modern humanities program. Cutting these programs altogether goes against the founding principles of the MSA itself to provide diversity both in student body and available subject matter.
With a mere “remove Magnet designation” typed callously in a tiny box, this report is totally disregarding the fact that magnet students add tremendously to not only the performance and attendance averages of the schools (as the report states itself!) but the vivacity and culture of said schools. If this funding cut does indeed occur, Houston Independent School District definitely won’t be the same – and probably for the worse.

Sara