Following a time-honored tradition employed by nearly all governmental and business entities, Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles delivered a tough end-of-day, end-of-week message last Friday to more than 500 central office employees: you don’t have a job anymore.Yes, some employees can apply for other jobs in HISD, but as Miles said in his announcement, but there aren’t appropriate places for all of them.
All this comes at a time that the district is embarking upon Miles’ New Education System initiative particularly in the 28 schools designated to be part of a completely new curriculum, with more NES-Affiliated schools yet to be determined. “We’ll be able to do it with the people that we have,” Miles assured in response to a question Friday.
“Reorganizations are hard. There are real people behind the numbers,” Miles said. “We want to make sure that we do this in a way that’s respectful but also in enough time for people to apply for other jobs if they don’t get a job during this reorganization or to transfer jobs in this organization. “ Positions in Human Resources will be reduced by about 40, and those in the Chief Academic Office by between 500 and 600 positions, or close to 30 percent of the people in that office. Of those, about 10 percent were already vacant, he said.