Houston ISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra announced that he will be stepping down within the year. The Houston Chronicle article had a great observation:

"Gayle Fallon, spokeswoman for the Houston Federation of Teachers, put it this way: Houston's schools chief has to work with a strong internal and citywide African-American political structure to run a district that's 60 percent Hispanic on a tax base that's largely white. Not to mention the fact that many of those white folks don't send their children to HISD schools.
'It would take a damn fool to think you don't have to be a political shark to get around that,' she told me." (Falkenberg, Lisa. Deficiency in political skills spelled doom for Saavedra. Houston Chronicle. February 5, 2009. pB7)

That sums up my main complaints about Dr. Saavedra. As a parent and a taxpayer, I was often dismayed by his assertions that he was "taking politics out" of decision-making. To me, that just sounded like he was taking the public voice out of decisions about school closures, rebuilding schools, etc.