HOUSTON – Houston ISD’s new school year officially began yesterday, and on the second day of school, Superintendent Mike Miles visited several schools to see how they are preparing.

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He said he attended Mitchell Elementary School, Thomas Middle School and Jones Academy.

Miles held a press conference on Tuesday to provide an update on the district’s status as the new year begins.

“I was very impressed with the teachers and principals and the lesson preparation they did all summer, or at least most of the summer,” he said.

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The district’s main focus this week was to provide 180 days of quality instruction between students and teachers, and the district said it is off to a better start this year than last year.

On Tuesday, about 274 schools reopened and the district did not have to close any playgrounds – despite complaints from parents last week about the condition of several playgrounds damaged by Hurricane Beryl. Many parents complained that overgrown grass, non-functioning air conditioning, mold and neglect had created a situation that was anything but conducive to learning.

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“I told you yesterday that it’s going to be a struggle every day for the rest of September and probably well into October,” Miles said. “But we were able to keep all the classrooms — not all the classrooms — but all the schools cool enough so that the kids had a comfortable learning environment. Every day there’s going to be a few classrooms here and there that get warm, and we may have to move some kids. But we didn’t have to close any schools today. Again, it’s an accomplishment for our maintenance department to keep the air conditioning running every day.”

He said the district reportedly has 30 vacancies in total, but also has about 23 additional teachers. At least five of those positions are Junior JRTOC and several are vocational and special education teacher positions.

“Even though we have 30 vacancies, we actually have about 23 additional teachers. That’s good because there are 10,640 teachers. So our children are not deprived of an excellent teacher even in the first few days of school,” Miles said.

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Miles said they had a much better day with transportation to The district said about 700 students were still being assigned new bus stops and routes on Monday. The district said more than 17,000 students have been assigned bus routes so far for the coming year.

For the remaining students who have not been assigned a route, the district said they have contacted families to inform them that if they have not received information on their school bus route and stop, they can call their campus or any of HISD’s transportation services helplines between 4:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.

“When we get up to speed here in the next few weeks, there will be at least 9,000 students riding the buses and we know that 3,000 of them are here because of the election program. And we know that some of them have not been given routes,” he said. “I think we are making good progress on that with all the kids getting routes.”

Miles said that students who have not yet enrolled and plan to do so in the next three weeks will also not have bus service. However, they will be asking for bus service, so changes will be made accordingly.

He said the call center can now respond much better to incoming inquiries and questions.

“But I’ll say it again: The transportation system has been problematic for years,” Miles said. “And we’re trying to change the entire system, not just the number of routes. We’re trying to optimize the routes. So we’ll continue to work on that.”

The superintendent said there were at least 88 known absences on the first day of school.

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