On Wednesday, the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT) filed a lawsuit in Harris County district court against the Houston ISD Board of Managers and state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles for mismanaging state funds and denying the district’s teachers state-funded pay raises as required by law.
As Hotline readers know, the Legislature passed House Bill 2 earlier this year, sending $8.5 billion in much-needed state funding into Texas public schools. Of the total, $3.7 billion was allocated to a new Teacher Retention Allotment, which was explicitly intended to provide across-the-board pay raises for Texas classroom teachers with at least three years of experience.
For a school district of Houston ISD’s size, the law funds a $2,500 increase for classroom teachers with 3-5 years of teaching experience and a $5,000 increase for classroom teachers with five or more years of experience. That’s not debatable. The Education Code says a school district “shall use money received” (emphasis added) to “increase the salary provided to each classroom teacher.”
Still, the Houston ISD school board recently approved a 2025-26 compensation plan that does not include the Teacher Retention Allotment, putting the district in plain violation of the law.
“The law is the law. No one, not even the governor’s right-hand man in Houston ISD, is exempt from it. Mike Miles mismanaged Texas taxpayer dollars at his charter school network, and now he’s messing with teachers’ hard-earned salaries in Houston ISD,” said Jackie Anderson, president of HFT. “Mike Miles has disrespected this district’s teachers from his very first day on the job, but both the law and our Legislature’s intent are crystal clear. If Mike Miles won’t come to the table to pay Houston ISD teachers what they are owed by law, then we’ll see him in court.”
Notably, Miles himself received an $82,000 annual salary increase in June, following the Texas Education Agency’s announcement it would continue its takeover of Houston ISD.
HFT’s initial request for a temporary restraining order was denied by a district court judge; if granted, this order would have prevented HISD from taking action with these HB 2 funds until legal proceedings are settled.
But the legal battle is far from over with another court date scheduled next week, and history shows our Houston ISD members are formidable foes. In 2023, HFT sued over a rewrite of the district’s evaluation system — and won. Last year, together with parents and community members, HFT defeated Miles’s multi-billion-dollar bond package.