Five Texas school districts at risk of a state takeover after ratings’ release

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A record five Texas school districts are now at risk of the state replacing their democratically-elected school board with the latest release of school performance ratings.

Connally, Lake Worth, Beaumont, Wichita Falls and Fort Worth school districts have all amassed five consecutive failing grades at one or more of its campuses, the threshold to trigger state action, a Texas Education Agency spokesperson confirmed with The Texas Tribune on Friday.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath has made no decisions yet on the future of these districts, the spokesperson said. The state could also order the underperforming schools to shut down instead of replacing school district boards.

The state has replaced a district’s school board and superintendent with a board of managers about 10 times since 2000.

The record high number of districts at risk of sanctions comes from three years’ worth of ratings released this year — the state released school ratings for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year on Friday and 2022-23 school year data in April.

A ruling from a state appeals court last month cleared the state to make the scores public, overturning a lower court decision that had tied the state’s hands from releasing ratings for years. A similar ruling from the same high court freed the state to release ratings for the 2022-23 school year in the spring.

Connally ISD’s Connally Elementary School and Lake Worth ISD’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy reached the threshold for state sanctions when ratings were released for the most recent school year.

After years of underperformance at Kirby Middle School, Wichita Falls ISD closed the campus and moved the students to Hirschi Middle School. That alone won’t be enough to stop TEA from stepping in.

At Fort Worth ISD, Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade shut down before TEA released its fifth F rating. District leaders initially believed they weren’t at risk of a takeover but Morath said in a letter the closure doesn’t absolve them of “compulsory” state action. A district spokesperson has told the Fort Worth Report they intend to appeal the rating.

Schools have an option to enter a partnership with a charter school network to avoid state sanctions. Beaumont ISD entered such a partnership with Third Future Schools for one of its struggling campuses, Fehl Price Elementary. For its second struggling campus, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, the board of trustees unanimously ordered its closure in 2024.

The Beaumont school district has faced state intervention before. About a decade ago, the state stepped in after a series of financial scandals. The districts only regained local control in 2020.

Most recently, TEA took over control of Houston ISD, the largest district in the state. Its state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles has had a controversial tenure — boasting a boost in test scores that came at the cost of drops in enrollment and widespread staff layoffs.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on education pathways coverage.

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