One day after getting bad press in The Houston Chronicle, Superintendent Mike Miles decided to lift his hiring freeze. This allowed hiring a teacher for a physics class where students were teaching each other in the absence of a teacher.

AP Physics students at the DeBakey High School for Health Professions had a new teacher Wednesday, after Houston ISD lifted a hiring freeze that had kept the position vacant since the start of the school year, forcing students to teach themselves college-level science.

The new teacher was hired on Friday, a day after Superintendent Mike Miles said the district was nearly finished with a staffing audit that led them to ask schools to limit hiring, according to an HISD spokesman. Students said they learned about the appointment Wednesday morning and had their first class with the teacher that same day. 

“She seems super nice and (like) a very good teacher,” said senior Zain Kundi, who led a student petition to fill the vacancy, via text message. “She was able to teach us more in 40 minutes than the last eight weeks of us (teaching ourselves)…”

At DeBakey, students and parents were told the hiring freeze was the reason why the school couldn’t fill the AP Physics position, which was left vacant after administrators allegedly tried to foist the responsibility upon a standard physics teacher, who took an extended leave of absence in protest.

Students were left to teach themselves advanced physics for nearly two months, with some students being pulled out of other classes to teach their peers. The school’s Parent Teacher Organization eventually stepped in and enlisted qualified volunteers to provide virtual lessons and tutoring.