Pros
I had the privilege of working under two amazing SSOs and two great principals that made my experience in HISD a positive one. As someone who worked in Special Education, I always felt supported by my administration and if there was something that needed to be fixed, both my principal and SSO worked tirelessly to get me the help and support I needed to find a solution.
Cons
For the district as a whole, the HR department for the district was always slow to complete paperwork for schools and employees. It's a large district, so there was always a lot for HR to do, but important paperwork was sometimes forgotten, and as a result deadlines were missed. For the Special Education department specifically, each school had a Diagnostician, an LSSP, and a Program Specialist assigned to their campus, but each of those people had about 5-10 other schools they worked with as well. Scheduling meetings, evaluations, and reevaluations was difficult when our Diag. was also just as many students at 5 other schools. All of the people involved in testing our students did an incredible job and were wonderful to work with, but it took some of our students a while to get tested because there was literally no time in the tester's schedule.