As incompetent as the HISD board may have been, the very-reactionary Texas state government is not going to help matters.

The online leftists and other liberals disparage and look down on the South due to the white supremacists and reactionaries dominating the headlines and the polls, but they never consider the huge amount of marginalized communities and poverty in those states. They would rather point at the South as a hotbed of backwardness while ignoring the highly prevalent existing oppression.

The state-appointed managers will hold immense power. They can control the budget, school closures, collaborations with charter networks, policies around curriculum and library books, as well as hiring or firing the superintendent, among other important decisions.

Political scientist Domingo Morel is the author of Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy, which examined more than 100 similar situations across the country.

The book’s central argument: state takeovers of school districts rarely improve academic or financial situations, but often undercut the hard-won political power of marginalized groups in urban areas.

“People of color represent the majority in the state of Texas … but at the state legislative level, they’re in the minority,” he said. “And so the way to create political power across the state is through the cities — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas … Because the schools are such an important part of the political power at the city level, when you take away the schools, you take away the power to the city as well. And then you start to really curtail that community’s power — not only at the city level, but then eventually at the state level.”