Colony Ridge’s massive growth challenges Cleveland ISD, catapults enrollment

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CLEVELAND — On a balmy spring Saturday in April, a line of eager job candidates wrapped around Cleveland ISD’s administration building as they waited to enter a job fair.

The school district’s effort to attract talent drew a wide-ranging cast of hopefuls: sharply dressed women in stilettos toting briefcases, recent college graduates and mothers clutching a stack of resumes in one hand and the tiny fists of toddlers in another.

SUMMARY

Over the past decade Cleveland ISD enrollment has quadrupled from about 3,300 in May 2013 to over 12,000 in May 2024.

• Cleveland ISD’s growth has created a number of challenges, including: teacher retention, facility shortages, mental health and finances.
• The school district is struggling to hire qualified, bilingual teachers. Its turnover rate hovers around 40 percent — twice as much as the state average.
• Students are less likely to have teachers who speak their language, they are taking more classes in portable classrooms and riding overcrowded buses.

Meanwhile, inside, Tonya Clark-Antwine, Cleveland ISD’s director of talent acquisition, was desperate. She needed to hire teachers.

Four months later, she is starting the 2024-25 school year cautiously optimistic. The district has four teacher vacancies, Clark-Antwine said, and is close to filling three.

“We are actually in a position of power,” Clark-Antwine said. “Prior to this year, we were generally carrying at least 100 vacancies for a variety of reasons.”

Cleveland ISD serves thousands of families moving into Colony Ridge , a 33,000-acre development in Liberty County that experienced explosive growth over the past decade. Enrollment at Cleveland ISD has quadrupled from about 3,300 in May 2013 to over 12,000 in May 2024.

That population boom has created exponential challenges for Texas’ fastest growing school district, including teacher retention, a school bus shortage, lack of facilities, substance abuse, and a financial deficit. Last year, the district spent $175 million, but Cleveland ISD only generated $165 million in revenue, leaving a $10 million deficit, according to district reports .

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Cleveland ISD’s Superintendent Stephen McCanless knows these challenges have a direct impact on the students he serves.

“This is what’s been handed to us as a district and this is the problem I have to solve,” he said.

A need for teachers

For the district, the teacher struggle is two-fold: hiring qualified teachers and retaining them, Clark-Antwine said. According to 2022-23 data from the Texas Education Agency , Cleveland ISD’s turnover rate for teachers is nearly 40 percent, almost double the state average.

Retention directly affects students from their academic performance to their mental health. Only 57 percent of students are meeting grade level expectations, about a 20 percent drop from the state average, according to 2022-23 TEA data .

Viví, 17, a senior at Cleveland High School who uses they/them pronouns and asked to be referred to by their middle name, said the district’s inability to keep high-quality teachers frustrates students.

“I didn’t have a math teacher for half the year. I mean, luckily I didn’t have a STAAR test for that class,” Viví said, referring to Texas’ standardized testing. “But they would just send us to the gym and we didn’t learn for, like, half the year.”

About 60 percent of the student body are emergent bilingual students — the new term for ESL, or English as a second language — adding pressure to find teachers who are, or can be, certified as bilingual educators.

Cleveland ISD employs over 900 teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade. Less than 30 percent of them are ESL-certified, and 15 percent are certified bilingual.

That’s a key component in a school district where over 85 percent of the student population is Hispanic or Latino. Many of them live in Colony Ridge, where an estimated 75,000-plus residents are largely Latino, according to Liberty County officials.

At the April job fair, the district interviewed 85 of the nearly 250 attendees who applied in a hiring process akin to speed dating.

Cleveland ISD offered 24 candidates a position. Eighteen accepted and are already in the classroom. None are certified bilingual teachers.

Managing growth with no end in sight

As a longtime administrator and Cleveland ISD’s superintendent since 2021, McCanless has seen the effects Colony Ridge’s rapid growth has had on the community.

When he was hired as Cleveland High School’s principal in 2013, districtwide enrollment topped out at 3,300 students. By May 2024, the district had 12,242 students enrolled, and McCanless started the 2024-25 school year expecting at least 12,500 students.

“Has that fast growth development put extra stressors on Cleveland ISD? Yes, it has,” Superintendent Stephen McCanless said. “When you have, at times, 50 to 75 students, sometimes 100 enrolling in one week, that's three to four teachers worth of students … and we are already over capacity.”

Our PRIOR Investigation

Last year, a Houston Landing investigation found many of those residents, whose children attend Cleveland ISD, have struggled to retain their homes.

• Since 2012, the developer has reacquired 45 percent of the 35,000-plus properties it sold.
• It’s a troubling pattern federal and state prosecutors also noticed and addressed by filing lawsuits against Colony Ridge Inc.
• Both the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General accused the company of targeting Latino land buyers with predatory loans.

McCanless narrowly avoided losing his job in July when the school district’s board of trustees called a special meeting to reconsider his contract after a series of “miscommunications.”

Tempering Cleveland ISD’s growth remains the superintendent’s focus. The enrollment boom kicked off in 2015, McCanless said, with the district adding between 1,500-1,900 students per school year.

All of this growth means classrooms are packed. Last year, Liberty County voters rejected a $125 million bond issue to fund a second campus for the high school, other campus buildings and expand bus routes.

As a result, the district is forced to use portable classrooms across its nine schools and education centers.

Viví takes forensic science and government inside portable classrooms, which are located outside the main high school campus building. The senior also spends first period darting around campus as an office aid, carrying out administrative tasks for the district.

On the first day of school, the senior was dispatched to deliver attendance sheets to substitute teachers in the portables, but when they got to the classroom, Viví was stranded. The portables can only be opened from the inside because of safety measures, Viví explained.

“I had to wait, like half an hour, outside in the heat (for someone to unlock the door),” they said.

About 39 percent of Cleveland ISD students take classes in portable classrooms, district spokesperson Matt Bieniek said.

Since Liberty County voters approved a $198 million bond in November 2019 — after rejecting a $250 million proposal earlier that year — they’ve turned down three subsequent issues.

Cleveland ISD has attempted to pass more bond issues than any other public school district in Texas in the past five years. Meager turnout, coupled with the number of Colony Ridge residents who are unable to or unaware of how to register to vote, have led to failed bonds.

The district is projected to grow by more than 25,000 students over the next decade if development continues, said McCanless, adding that he expressed his concerns to John and William “Trey” Harris — the brothers behind Colony Ridge.

“I have asked the developer to, ‘Please slow it down, put the brakes on it,’” he said. “Now whether (Harris) does that or not, that’s his choice. The district needs some time to catch up.”

Unlike in other states, Colony Ridge is not required to pay an impact fee to help Cleveland ISD manage growth. John Harris, Colony Ridge’s CEO and president, said his company does its part by providing the district with property taxes and donating land. The development is home to four of Cleveland ISD’s campuses and Colony Ridge has already set aside another 100 acres of land they will donate to the district if and when voters approve a bond issue.

Harris said he is directing the development’s property owner’s association to increase voter education for residents. In the last two years, less than 40 percent of county voters supported giving the school district more money.

“That's pretty dismal,” Harris said.

Without a bond issue to build classrooms and campuses, McCanless will be forced to cover the costs of portable classrooms, buses and new hires out of Cleveland ISD’s $60 million fund balance, according to district reports . Before next year, he said, the district plans to buy one large building, which houses 10 classrooms and two restrooms.

Buses also takes a toll on the district’s budget. About 85 percent of Cleveland ISD students take the bus to and from school, McCanless said, while bus ridership hovers around 40-50 percent in nearby districts. Each bus costs McCanless $150,000, and in preparation for the 2024-25 school year, the superintendent said he had to account for about $3 million to $5 million in bus expenses alone.

Bus routes have reached capacity numerous times, forcing administrators to add several runs, McCanless said.

Viví, who used to take the school bus, doesn’t bother anymore and warns overcrowding is an accident waiting to happen.

“Our classes have up to 30-40 students in each class,” they said. “But our buses … oh, don’t even get me started on our buses. Every single seat — front to back — is three people to a seat.”

To save money and avoid layoffs, the longtime administrator eliminated positions, offering staff in those roles other jobs within the district. This year, they cut 76 positions, mostly professional and clerical, rather than teachers, saving the district about $4.7 million.

District adapts as students struggle

Viví’s older sister, Nat, is a student at Lone Star College’s Kingwood branch pursuing an associate degree in education. The 21-year-old also substitute teaches at Cleveland ISD and asked her last name not be used out of fear it could impact her future employment.

Nat believes in her community — both as a Colony Ridge resident and the proud sister of two Cleveland ISD students. But, she has witnessed firsthand the triumphs and heartaches Cleveland ISD students face through her siblings.

On Monday, Aug. 12, the second week of school, the district had its first drug-related incident of the year when EMS responded to an overdose. The medication Naloxone, known as Narcan, was administered, Cleveland ISD Police Chief Angie Allen said.

That same week, Allen’s department arrested five children for drug-related incidents.

Last year, there were 24 drug-related EMS calls and seven overdoses, according to Lacy Green, Cleveland ISD’s head nurse. By comparison, one overdose happened on campus during the 2022-23 school year.

During last year’s spike in drug-related calls, district officials hosted town halls, educating parents, students to increase interventions, said Tyra Hodge, the district’s social emotional learning director and counselor supervisor.

Nat said the drug crisis highlights a lack of resources to make the community feel safer.

“Kids can’t be kids if there’s no parks, there’s no Boys and Girls Club,” she said. “We are a low-income community. These kids’ parents are not going to be home 24/7. They're working.”

Harris said there are four soccer fields under construction in the Santa Fe subdivision. Colony Ridge commissioned a member of their engineering department to assess the community’s recreational needs and Harris said they are in the planning process of building a sports complex in the Santa Fe subdivision.

Cleveland ISD's police chief believes its problems are no different than other Texas schools grappling with population growth.

“Most of the challenges we have are dealing with the cultural differences,” Allen said. “We have children from El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico. We're kind of a melting pot.”

Harris has ‘an open mind’

Harris acknowledged he has not met with McCanless, but he plans to contact the superintendent to address the development’s impact on the district.

The developer believes Colony Ridge can be a model to solve the affordable housing crisis.

“I'm gonna reach out to Mr. McCanless,” Harris said. “And make sure that he knows I've got an open mind.”

Meanwhile, Nat said she hopes to become the kind of educator Colony Ridge residents deserve.

“I will never be ashamed of where I come from,” she said. “If anybody asks me, ‘Yeah I’m from terrenos , I’m from las colonias .’ that’s where I live and that’s my home and I’m gonna try to make it better because that’s all I can do.”

Adriana Rezal, data visualization engineer, contributed data reporting to this article.