SAISD Teachers Call the New High 5 Teaching Plan Too Rigid and Ask the District to Roll Back Its Reach

San Antonio Independent School District's new High 5 instructional framework standardizes five areas of teaching across the district: classroom board configuration, checks for understanding, structured professional learning community sessions, campus data trackers, and strategic walkthroughs with feedback, according to the district. Classroom boards are expected to display a week's worth of learning, including warm-ups, learning objectives, language objectives and exit assignments, and teachers are encouraged to use activities such as turn-and-talks and whiteboard responses to check students' understanding.

"What we hear from teachers is that it's too rigid, it's too prescriptive, and that's why we've asked the district to roll back the universality of the initiative," said Alejandra Lopez, president of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel. Lopez said some teachers were given directions on how to arrange desks, which she described as elements that micromanage the work teachers do day in and day out, and she said teachers want district administrators to work directly with campuses that need support to determine what would help them most.

David Garza, a Head Start teacher and Alliance member, told the school board he had heard from teachers, including some in the Master Teacher program, who said they are willing to leave the district because of the rigidity and inflexibility of High 5. One teacher told the board of an alarming number of conversations with veteran and early teachers alike who are seriously considering leaving the profession entirely if the framework becomes the job, and another called the plan's approach pretty insulting to teachers with many years of experience.

Superintendent Adrian Bustillos described this as a "reset year" for the district. "Our goal, my goal here, is to help us lead," Bustillos said. "That we do prevent a state intervention so it doesn't happen. So, right now, this is what I feel is best." The district, in a statement, said the initiative creates a common framework for instruction by ensuring clear learning objectives, frequent student engagement and feedback, data-driven decision-making, collaborative teacher planning, and strategic walkthroughs. Bustillos said the district will collect data regularly and use students' mid-year assessment results in January to help determine how to proceed with the program.