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Inside Today: Medical episode leads to fatal area crash • Page 3 Smart choices last a lifetime.
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Saturday, June 24, 2023 • Vol. 68 • No. 25
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Local charter making final pitch to state board By Landan Kuhlmann landan@theleadernews.com
Your neighborhood living room in The Heights Serving coffee, tea, wine, beer, savories and sweets 7 am to 9 pm daily.
1030 Heights Blvd, Houston,TX 77008
713-434-6923 Contributed photo An emcee oversees a previous Heights Great American Pie event. The event is making a comeback this year on July 10 after not being held since 2019.
INSIDE.
Heights Great American Pie Contest returns July 10 By Landan Kuhlmann landan@theleadernews.com
The Archway Gallery is sounding its last call for submissions to the gallery. See more in this week’s Art Valet.
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Coming soon Leading this week’s Nibbles and Sips is the expansion of Montrose Tex Mex spot into the area.
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In just a few weeks, dozens of community members will be back inside the Heights Fire Station tasting as much pie as they can possibly imagine, as a popular community event returns to area. On July 10, the Houston Heights Association will bring back the annual Great American Pie Contest for the first time since 2019. The event began in 2016 but had not been held for the last three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftereffects. But the time is now for it to return, and organizers are anticipating a big return for the event that has become so popular in the Heights. “It’s about building community, building bridges, having fun, and creating a path for people to connect,” said Angela DeWree, who is helping organize the event. “Because who doesn’t like pie?” During the event, community members of all ages can submit their pies for tasting by other community member as well as a panel of judges that will include Chef Levi Rollins of Urban Eats on Washington Avenue as well as Alli Jarrett of Harold’s Tap Room and Restaurant on 19th Street, local Heights foodie John Frels, and Cleverly Stone among others. The event is free and open for all community members to attend and enter, according to the event page. There will be prizes and winners awarded to entrants in three categories - Sweet, Savory, and Artisanal Design – after all the pies have been tasted, and the public will have a chance to taste the pies themselves after winners have been announced. And what’s more, DeWree and fellow organizer Dewayne Ross believe that the community gathering event is just another way of contributing to the close-knit fabric that the Heights community is regarded for – especially after the pandemic. See Pie P. 6
Local Leaders This week we celebrate some volunteers that keep the community’s wheels turning. See who was chosen inside today.
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THE INDEX. Public/Topics ...........................3 Sports ......................................6 Classifieds ................................................. 8 Local Culture ...........................3 Food & Drink ...........................5
In the coming weeks, a proposed local charter school could find out whether they have been approved to start their operations in the area. On Wednesday, administrators with Heritage Classical Academy were set to go before the Texas State Board of Education and make their final pitch in efforts to get approval for the school. It is the fourth straight year that the school will go before the SBOE in hopes for approval. Heritage would be a tuitionfree public charter school that would be somewhere in the 77092 zip code area of Houston if it is approved, according to boar member Kathryn Van der Pol, though an exact location has not been released pending approval from the state. The school would begin with students in kindergarten and first grade classes and would grow each year until it is a full kindergarten through eighth grade school that uses a classical model for learning, according to the school’s website. Heritage has been controversial among state board members because it planned to use a curriculum developed by Hillsdale College, a conservative college in Michigan, according to a 2022 story from the Texas Tribune. However, Van der Pol claimed the previous rejections were largely because a swath of board members were opposed to the concept of charter schools. Charter schools in Texas receive all their funding from the state, which has raised some opposition to the concept. But overall, there are now nearly 200 such options around the state. Van der Pol said the school fell one vote short of approval from the 14-member board last year and did not fall See Heritage P. 6
Contributed photo Organizers say that at least 50 pies are submitted for entry each year by those of all ages.
HISD board to vote on budget Thursday By Landan Kuhlmann landan@theleadernews.com
As part of the new regime change continuing, the new Houston ISD board of managers was slated to vote Thursday on a new budget for the 2023-2024 school year. The roughly $2.2 million budget that board members will be voting on implementing for the upcoming school year is just the latest step in the new board taking over operations for the district in wake of the state takeover. According to meeting PowerPoints, the 2023-2024 budget
Mike Miles
proposed to the previous elected board of trustees prior to the state takeover – which went into effect on June 1 – is about $2.2 billion in the general fund. And as the new board has come into the process so late – it must be approved by the end of the month – Superintendent Mike Miles said last week that the new board is not making many changes of note to the previouslypresented one. “We are taking the budget that was presented to the last board with some changes,” Miles said last week. “We are largely not touching the budget that was presented to the prior board.”
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Several challenges do present themselves as far as the budget is concerned, however, which Miles and other board members touched on during last Thursday’s meeting. The district is facing an expected budget shortfall of a little over $168 million for the upcoming school year, according to last week’s presentation, though the presentation also noted that about $70 million is expected in unspent funds to help eat into the shortfall a little bit. Current projected expenditures are about $2.4 billion according to the presentation. See HISD P. 6