Despite months of community protests, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced last week that it would begin the process of taking over Fort Worth Independent School District, Texas’ ninth largest school district with 68,000 students. The move marks the second-largest district to be taken over by the state, next to the highly controversial takeover of Houston ISD in 2023, and is part of an increasing trend of state intervention into locally controlled public education systems.
In a letter to district leaders, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said he planned to appoint a superintendent, a conservator, and a new board of managers, thereby deposing the currently elected school board, after the appeal process ends on October 30.
After long legal delays over state accountability ratings, the Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade received its fifth consecutive failing rating for the 2022-23 school year in April this year, triggering a state law that empowers TEA to take over an entire school district if a single school receives a failing mark for five years in a row. In 2020, the district handed the campus to the nonprofit Texas Wesleyan University Leadership Academy Network, as part of another state law that incentivizes privatization of struggling campuses to avoid takeover.
