Last month, the HISD Board of Education approved a budget aligned with improving human capital in an effort to address persistently low-performing, hard-to-staff schools. As a part of that process, the district made some adjustments to the structure of its organization.
Under the previous structure, five chief schools officers (three at the elementary level, and one each at the middle- and high-school levels) reported directly to a chief school support officer and indirectly to the superintendent. Moving forward, there will be six chief school officers (two each at the elementary and secondary levels, and two new “transformation” officers tasked exclusively with supporting struggling schools), and all will report directly to the superintendent. Each will have a director assigned to them to help manage daily operations. HISD will also be expanding its corps of school support officers, with 15 SSOs dedicated to serving the two transformation officers, to ensure a small school-to-SSO ratio.