School districts stay quiet as lawmakers push to limit when they can sue the state

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The Texas Senate passed a bill last week taking aim at school district leaders who used lawsuits to halt the release of the state’s school performance ratings for two consecutive years.

Senate Bill 1962, which now heads to the Texas House for consideration, would make it more difficult for districts to use the courts in a similar way again, effectively taking away a tool district leaders have leaned on to push back against state changes to the ratings system they believe are unfair.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, tried to give district leaders a say at a hearing on the bill earlier this month: Would anyone involved with or in support of prior suits speak up?

“There’s got to be someone here,” West said.

But there was no one.

Every witness who testified at the hearing was in support of SB 1962, frustrated that families have gone years without information on how their local schools were performing.

In backdoor conversations with lawmakers, superintendents have conveyed their fears that the bill would limit their ability to defend what they think is best for them and give the head of the state education agency unchecked power to change school performance rules.

“What we believe was a check and balance now doesn't exist,” said Gabriel Zamora, the superintendent of the Fort Stockton Independent School District, which joined both lawsuits. “They don't want people who are going to come against the grain, even if we're trying to do the right thing. Instead, what they want is yes-men and people who are just going to kick the can down the road."

The Texas Tribune spoke to seven school leaders who criticized the proposed legislation but said they declined to testify against it because of what they described as a growing hostility among Republican lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, toward public education. Many of the school leaders interviewed by the Tribune asked not to be identified out of fear of turning their school districts into a target. It is illustrative of the more muted attitude schools are taking toward advocacy at a time when they worry any misstep could compromise some of the gains they hope to make around school funding this legislative session.

Courts, legislators send a message: No more suits

The state’s school accountability ratings, calculated by the Texas Education Agency, provide Texans a simplified and critical look at schools’ performance. Many parents consult them when making choices about where to enroll their kids, and businesses can use them to assess what communities to invest in.

The TEA grades school districts and individual campuses on an A-F scale based on metrics like students’ standardized test scores and their preparedness for life after high school.

But for two years, a pair of lawsuits from districts across the state have blocked the release of ratings. In 2023, more than 120 school districts argued that the TEA did not give them adequate notice before rolling out stricter college and career readiness benchmarks for their A-F ratings. They said the agency had applied the new standards to evaluate students who had already graduated, which meant districts did not get a chance to come up with additional measures to meet the new goalposts.

Last year, about 30 districts sued again to block the ratings, this time saying a third party should have verified the new computer grading system used to calculate STAAR test scores, another big metric that affects ratings.

Superintendents who joined in on the lawsuits say they support a statewide ratings system that holds districts accountable and agreed that the standards for the accountability system should be updated periodically. But they sued, they said, because TEA Commissioner Mike Morath had broken state education rules.

Texas lawmakers have not been impressed. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, accused the school districts of “hiding behind lawsuits” to “shield failure” of their poor ratings. Bettencourt filed SB 1962 to send a message to those districts: The lawsuits must end.

“I'm frustrated and really disappointed in these 100 school districts … or the 30 that did it two years in a row,” Bettencourt said. “No offense, you jump on the state twice, I consider that lawfare.”

SB 1962 would impose restrictions on how school districts pay their attorneys’ fees for suits related to their performance ratings. Those that sue would open the door to increased TEA oversight.

The bill would also change state standardized testing to move away from the long-criticized, end-of-the-year STAAR test and replace it with shorter exams. The House has a nearly identical bill, House Bill 4, but the lower chamber has not advanced it.

Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals recently permitted TEA to release the 2023 ratings, ruling that Morath did not overstep his authority when he changed the scoring metrics. Parents will be able to see their districts’ 2023 ratings on Thursday.

In a rare move, a top jurist used the ruling to weigh in on the legislation. Chief Justice Scott Brister nodded to HB 4, saying he “shared” the Legislature’s frustrations.

“This bill may or may not pass, but it illustrates a truth that courts too often forget: if current laws are not followed, the Legislature may enact more drastic ones,” Brister wrote in a court opinion. “I would make it the law in our statewide district that lower courts should not entertain disputes about school performance ratings.”

Checks and balances

The seven superintendents the Tribune spoke to represent big and small school districts across rural, suburban and urban regions of the state.

The superintendents said SB 1962 would erect so many barriers for districts wanting to challenge performance ratings that legal action would become largely unviable. For example, districts that sue would risk having TEA appoint a conservator to oversee district operations. In extreme cases, a conservator could replace school board members or superintendents who do not follow their directives.

The superintendents worry that the bill, along with the appeals court ruling, would translate into unrestricted power for the TEA commissioner when creating rules and regulations around the schools’ rating system.

One superintendent from a suburban district worried the commissioner’s growing authority means anyone in that position could make unchecked, politically motivated decisions.

“There's no protection from it becoming political. It puts a lot of power into a non-elected official role,” said the suburban district superintendent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of putting his district in state officials’ crosshairs. “It basically makes the commissioner king.”

The TEA commissioner is appointed by the governor.

SB 1962 “is an overstep by the legislative process to take away checks and balances,” said a superintendent of a rural school district, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “That is fundamental to our democracy.”

The rural superintendent said the expansion of TEA’s authority would come at the expense of local school board officials and school superintendents, who usually enjoy broad independence to make their own regulations. He called it an ironic shift in power in a GOP-led state since limited government has long been a key conservative principle.

Lawmakers and the justices on the 15th Court of Appeals have said school districts should have input on how performance ratings are calculated, but insist that input should be provided through administrative, internal appeals processes.

A TEA spokesperson said districts involved in the lawsuit deliberately chose not to use the agency’s appeals process. The spokesperson also said the agency communicated to them as early as January 2023 preliminary expectations on how the performance benchmarks would change and sought public comment on those changes.

Bruce Gearing, the superintendent of Leander ISD, said he was not a “big believer in lawsuits.” Leander and about 200 other districts first raised their concerns in a letter to Morath about the changes to the ratings system standards, but they didn’t feel like they got adequate relief from TEA. Individual district leaders also tried and failed to get the commissioner to respond to their concerns informally in closed-door cabinet meetings, he said. Joining the lawsuit was a last resort, Gearing said.

“We met a dead end every time,” he said. “We had no recourse to any other mechanism, other than challenging the state through a lawsuit. We had no choice.”

A quiet resignation

The school leaders said they did not testify against the bill because they feel senators have not seriously considered their input for years. They described a hostile climate toward them that reflects a broader, growing skepticism of public schools.

Since the pandemic, public schools have faced criticism from conservative groups and some families over health restrictions and the way children are taught about sex and race. Schools have gone for years without a significant increase to their base funding at a time when inflation has sent some of their costs skyrocketing, leading many districts to adopt deficit budgets.

Last session, Gov. Greg Abbott refused to approve a boost to districts’ base funding as school vouchers, his top legislative priority in recent years, failed to advance through the Legislature last session. His office has argued that Texas’ public school funding is at an all-time high and accused some school districts of spending it on “administrative bloat.” A Tribune analysis recently found the state’s share of the funds that schools receive per student significantly decreased in the last decade until recently.

Many superintendents said they did not feel like their testimony would affect senators’ votes or their willingness to amend the bill’s language.

“The political climate does not seem to be welcoming. At some point you kind of see the writing on the wall,” one superintendent said. “We have districts to run. We're trying to get ready for STAAR. We need to be here for our districts and our students.”

School leaders have focused their efforts elsewhere. They say they have had closed-door conversations with House lawmakers, whom they are now counting on to advocate for changes to SB 1962.

Public school leaders in general have opted to take a less combative approach to their advocacy this year, a shift from previous sessions. Last month, House Democrats criticized school leaders for not being more aggressive about their funding needs.

School leaders say they don’t want to risk the gains they hope to make this year or put a target on their backs. On the same day the Senate approved SB 1962 last week, the House passed an $8 billion piece of legislation that would increase teacher pay and make new investments in special education.

If this year’s legislative session ends with them securing more funds for schools in exchange for some of their local power, they said that’s a concession they have to be willing to make.

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