A Revival of God Consciousness

Bobby Mills, Phd

e Houston Independent School District

Do you, have it? For

Having EI can take time, and one may need practice at it, but if you are self-aware, then you can control your emotions and manage just about any situation you are faced in. Now, this does not mean that this will control other people’s emotions and how they may react, or will solve all your problems, but being EI means that you can recognize how others are feelings and use that to your advantage in how you respond. You will also better understand why an individual was feeling a certain way, or may have thought a certain way. Being EI can not only help you professionally but also in your personal life as well. We live in a sensitized world where anything you say or do can be used against you. Due to this sensitivity, it may cause you to have to walk on eggshells around certain people because you don’t know what may set them o . If you are emotionally aware, it will help you channel your feelings and their feeling as well. With everything that is going around the world such as politics, pandemics, racism, social media, cancel culture, and so much more, it is a lot to try to process all at once. We continue to take in so much information on a daily basis and hardly ever sit down to navigate the emotional side to all of it. is includes identifying what you’re feeling and how it makes you feel. en you must take those feelings and make sense of them. is is where EI comes into play. I have been working on my own EI, and I must say it does make a di erence in how I approach something or someone, and how I manage situations di erently now, than I would have as a younger me. is is personal growth.

America’s constitutional Founders knew that educational spiritual enlightenment is the life blood of social democracy. e Founders wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible, because the Bible declares: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” (Revelation 1: 3). Reading is spiritually developmental. us, the Founders created a mass-universal free public education system to have a stable functioning democracy. erefore, the educational system must be universalized, and at the same time, particularized because one size does not t all. e North Forest ISD found out this truism. Now, HISD has found out the hard way, and is facing state-controlled receivership. Incompetence is a deadly enemy of e ective educational development, even though, HISD is not totally responsible for its receivership predicament. Dysfunctional educational development begins in the home with parents who do not set standards of moral conduct and educational developmental expectations. more visit aframnews.com

Prior to the 2015 legislative session, the law only allowed the TEA to take over a district for two years, but with the passage of House Bill 3106, a takeover can last beyond those two years.

Since 2019, the TEA has kept HISD under their radar a er “allegations of misconduct by trustees and years of low academic performance at Phillis Wheatley High School - one of the district’s 276 schools.” Although progress has been made since then, the district is still not performing where it should be. If the takeover follows through, it will impact hundreds of students, making it the largest takeover to happen. is will not be the rst time the TEA has taken over a district in Texas as this has happened in Beaumont and El Paso, just to name a few. Most of the issues with education stem from a historic case in 1954 known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. is Supreme Court case ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. is ruling came a er the “separate but equal ruling” in the Plessy v. Ferguson case that deemed racially segregated public facilities legal. But we were never equal, and our communities have always lacked the adequate resources that have been needed to thrive. Integration hurt our communities and did more harm than good as it tore our communities apart

in Beaumont and El Paso,

and even when legal segregation ended, nothing changed. Some of our communities haven’t been the same since. Black people did not have equal facilities like White folks did. Black schools were still not up to par like White schools. Despite this, our communities and schools have done the best we could with what we have. So even though the Brown v. Board of Education case made the ruling of segregation illegal, segregation to integrate its schools, and one source mentioned how the questions of “de facto remain.” of segregation illegal, segregation

De facto segregation is a term that was used in the 1960s and has been de ned by Cornell University as a term used to describe “a situation in which legislation did not overtly segregate students by race but nevertheless school segregation continued.” Sometimes segregation occurs naturally due to di erent factors outside of race

HISD Board of Education Trustees

still occurred across the nation and even took decades in some places before they started their desegregation process. It was in 1968 when United States District Court Judge Ben C. Connally ordered HISD to desegregate. e transformation did not happen right away and even took years until anything happened. According to Texas Archive, it wasn’t until 1969 that the Department of Justice stepped in to address the issue. HISD had also implemented the creation of a new school that would have a “balanced faculty.” is was the rst school during that time to exist in the South. HISD took decades like socioeconomic status for an example.

So, what do our schools look like today? According to e Century Foundation, “Nationwide, two out of ve Black and Latinx students attend schools where more than 90 percent of their classmates are non-White, while one in ve White students attends a school where more than 90 percent of students are also White.” is shows that our schools are still segregated and unequal.

As the largest school district in Texas and the eighth largest school district in the United States, HISD serves approximately 187,000 students. Out of those students, positively impact all students.

62.01% are Hispanic, 22.19% are African American, 4.45% are Asian, and 9.951% are White. A TEA takeover would greatly impact the district and the communities it serves, but the bene ts could outweigh the cost. TEA can pump needed funds and resources to help build a stronger foundation that will stand for many generations to come. It can also provide an equitable learning environment that will positively impact all students. Additionally, another potential takeover could happen with Dallas Independent School District (DISD). According to the Dallas Express, “ e district’s latest accountability report found that almost 20% of its Class of 2022 failed to graduate in four years. Furthermore, only 41% of DISD students scored at grade level on last year’s STAAR exams.” Both HISD and DISD have struggled over the years regarding student success. However, HISD has managed to make signicant progress while DISD shows opposite trends. One of the questions that has not been answered is, why are students not successful? Why are our students falling behind and not meeting state expectations? More of a conversation is needed to address the concerns of our future. e decisions made in the potential HISD takeover could set the precedent for the outcome of DISD. As Benjamin Franklin stated, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Let’s do what needs to be done for our children and our communities.