The Texas Observer

All of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions: Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine.

Houston ISD pays its state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, a base salary of $462,000, and the district also gave him a bonus of $173,660 approved by its state-appointed board in September.

Fifteen years ago, in May 2011, dozens of newly inducted Teach for America (TFA) corps members gathered at Trinity University in San Antonio to prepare for a five-week summer training institute, which would be hosted at Rice University in Houston. It was the first time I had ever been selected for anything exclusive—TFA’s acceptance rate was around 15 percent at the time—and I had all the attendant feelings of imposter syndrome.

The elusive lady caught my eye from across the cul-de-sac on the street of my childhood home, her brilliant orange-and-black wings fluttering. The monarch butterfly sailed through the breeze, searching for a spot to land amid the manicured green lawns of North Texas suburbia. This fuzzy memory and others like it were a cornerstone of my youth. In nearly all, I was playing outside with siblings, neighbors, and friends, gallivanting barefoot while dodging acorns scattered across the concrete.

Under threat of possible takeovers by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), nine school districts are set to hand over 15 public schools to Third Future Schools-Texas (TFS-Texas), a charter school operator previously run by state-appointed Houston ISD superintendent Mike Miles.

For years, climate scientists have projected that South Texas would grow hotter and drier—that drought cycles would lengthen, that rainfall would become less reliable, and that the water systems built for a wetter century would eventually face conditions they were never designed to absorb. In Corpus Christi, that projection has become a daily operational reality.

All of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions: Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine.

In February, San Antonio pastor Dianne Garcia led a multi-day, 90-mile peace walk across South Texas in solidarity with children and families detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I had the honor of joining Pastor Dianne for the final leg of her journey, marching across San Antonio with hundreds of people who had gathered from across the country to demand freedom for families and an end to family detention.

The Democratic U.S. Senate primary between state Representative James Talarico and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett was marked by subtle, if unremarkable, policy differences and questions around whose fighting style better reflected the desires of Texans.

All of the Texas Observer’s articles are available for free syndication for news sources under the following conditions: Articles must link back to the original article and contain the following attribution at the top of the story: “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine.