Last month, the largest school district in Texas, the Houston Independent School District (HISD), announced the elimination of its Wraparound Services Department.
This department provided students in need with food, clothing, supplies, and hygiene. It also supported students who were chronically absent or truant, helping them stay on track.
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Since the beginning of the year, 2 Investigates has been tracking the issue of truancy in Texas. We previously reported that over 1 million children were considered truant in Texas during the last four school years. During this year’s legislative session, several bills were filed in the Texas House and Senate aimed at addressing this problem.
After reviewing truancy-related data submitted to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for the past four school years, we found that HISD reported zero prevention measures and zero truancy complaints filed against parents or legal guardians. Yet, during the same timeframe, the district reported tens of thousands of students being truant each year.
State law requires school districts to notify parents or guardians when a student has three or more unexcused absences in a month and to implement truancy prevention measures.
Students become truant for various reasons, as we all know. A recent story published by the Associated Press revealed that by pairing court filings with student records from HISD, researchers identified over 18,000 instances between 2002 and 2016 where students lived in homes facing eviction. They found that students facing eviction were absent more often. Even when they did not have to change schools, students threatened with eviction missed four more days in the following school year than their peers.
According to the AP, under federal law protecting homeless students, districts are required to try to keep children in the same school if they lose their housing midyear, providing daily transportation. However, children who are evicted do not always qualify for these services. Even those who do often fall through the cracks, as schools may not always know why children are leaving or where they are headed.
This is likely where services like HISD’s Wraparound Department would have been beneficial, but according to the district, it no longer fits today’s model.
“Over time, we found that while wraparound specialists did important work in identifying student needs, the consistent gaps in service delivery made it impossible to ensure those needs were met. In fact, many specialists were often asked to fill other roles, such as lunchroom or car line duty, rather than focusing exclusively on supporting students. Despite renewed efforts in the past year to prioritize at-risk students, we found that the connection between identified needs and student outcomes was not strong enough to justify continuing the model,” wrote Najah Callander, HISD’s deputy chief of family and community partnerships, in a letter to community leaders on April 17.
Last school year, when the state took over the district and hired Superintendent Mike Miles, several changes were implemented, including the reduction of more than 200 wraparound specialists and a budget cut of about $14 million from the Wraparound Services Department due to financial constraints. After these cuts, approximately 48 wraparound specialists remained.
To replace what was previously known as wraparound services, the district stated that the supports once provided by wraparound specialists will now be managed by campus and district teams, including nurses, office managers, counselors, at-risk coordinators, and parent liaisons.
“The 130 New Education System (NES) campuses, which serve the majority of HISD’s most at-risk students, will maintain robust staffing structures designed to ensure students’ needs are met. These campuses have extended operating hours and will continue to serve as a critical point of support,” the letter stated.
The district will also continue to serve students at its Sunrise Centers, with plans to open its eighth location next year. The Sunrise Centers are located in communities throughout the district and aim to support the long-term, foundational needs of students.