They range from nonprofit leaders and business executives to classroom teachers and former elected officials.
Many are parents.
Most live within FWISD — many on the western side of the district.
They want to serve on the Texas-appointed board of managers that will lead Fort Worth ISD during a state takeover for at least two years.
The Fort Worth Report obtained and verified a list of 180 applicants who attended mandatory governance training hosted by the Texas Education Agency. Eleven people on the list confirmed they applied to be a manager and attended the training. This marks the first public disclosure of those seeking to be a manager for the nearly 70,000-student district.
Agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the selection process remains ongoing and that 196 individuals attended at least one day of training. The list obtained by the Report did not include names of the remaining 16 people.
The list has been narrowed down to 21 candidates, said Tom Harris, a Hillwood executive vice president who is among those advancing to the next round. The smaller group recently attended additional training sessions, he said.
Harris applied because of his work through the Mayor’s Council on Education & Workforce. He said he’s a public education advocate whose children graduated from public schools, but he’s also seen local schools struggle.
“I’ve been here for 36 years, and some of the public schools have been underperforming that whole time,” said Harris, who has worked closely with Fort Worth-area school districts at Hillwood.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath is still deciding who he will appoint to the board. Morath is expected to announce those appointments and a superintendent in the coming weeks.
The managers will replace nine locally elected trustees and have the authority to set policy, budgets, property tax rates and more. Their goal: Bring about immense academic improvements across the district after a now-closed, persistently failing campus triggered the intervention.
Another applicant said he applied to bring financial and staffing expertise to the district’s turnaround.
Curtis Mahanay, a Fort Worth resident and former budget manager for St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota, said he attended the state’s two-day governance training but did not advance in the selection process. He said the takeover will require deeper alignment of budgeting, staffing and student needs.
“Effective district leadership requires integrating finance, staffing and student priorities,” he wrote in an email to the Report. “Governance is necessary but not sufficient.”
Elected trustees remain as powerless figureheads whose seats will still be decided by voters in upcoming elections.
The Report filed records requests for the nearly 300 applications and related communications. The agency declined to release them, arguing the materials were part of a “pending audit” tied to the Fort Worth ISD takeover and, therefore, exempt from disclosure under state law. Agency officials sent the request to the Texas attorney general’s office for a ruling.
Open-records attorneys say that interpretation is unusual.
Joe Larsen, a Dallas attorney who represents media organizations in public-information disputes, said he has never seen applications for appointed public officials treated as audit working papers.
“I’ve never, ever seen that in my entire life,” Larsen said.
Once the state decides to take over a district, the audit that led to that decision is over, he said. What comes next — selecting new leadership — is not an audit, he added.
Larsen said transparency is especially important when appointed managers will exercise the same authority as an elected school board.
“The whole point of a takeover is to restore public confidence,” he said. “The only way you do that is by bringing the public on board.”
Applicants come largely from within district boundaries — 112 with identifiable ZIP codes live in FWISD — with the highest concentrations in west and southwest Fort Worth ZIP codes such as 76109, 76107 and 76110, according to a Report analysis.
FWISD resident Dainer Williams wants appointed board members who serve for the district’s diverse communities and lead with empathy — and transparency. They must have a mission to improve academics, she stressed.
“I teach kids in my youth ministry, and a lot of them can’t read or write,” Williams said. “We got to get on our grind.”
Adrienne Haynes, a mother in the district, wants the same, along with managers who are diverse and relate to the communities they will serve.
“They need to be able to connect with our children’s needs,” Haynes said.
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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