Texas Education Agency taking over Lake Worth, Connally and Beaumont school districts

From The Texas Tribune:

The Texas Education Agency is replacing the elected school boards of the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Thursday.

State law allows Morath to either close a campus or appoint new leadership if at least one school in the district receives five consecutive failing grades in Texas’ academic accountability system. Each of the districts met that threshold.

Pending appeals, the commissioner plans to replace each district’s school board with a state-selected board of managers. Morath will also appoint a conservator with governing authority over current district and campus leaders during the transition, which typically takes several months to complete.

The education agency will solicit applications from local community members interested in joining each district’s board of managers. Morath will also appoint superintendents to lead the districts.

Each of the schools that triggered takeovers in the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth districts educates a majority Black and Hispanic student population, and the overwhelming majority of their children come from low-income families.

Lake Worth’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy triggered the intervention in that district. In letters informing the districts about the takeovers, Morath noted that during the latest round of accountability ratings, all but one of Lake Worth’s six campuses earned failing grades. Meanwhile, five campuses have received unacceptable ratings for more than a year, while only 22% of students are meeting grade level across all subjects.

Lake Worth school district leaders were acutely aware of the challenges facing the school district leading up to the takeover, said Superintendent Mark Ramirez, who was hired this year. Ramirez said the district has focused on addressing the challenges facing each campus, which should serve as a foundation for the incoming board of managers to build upon.

“Our preparation ensures zero instructional loss for our children,” Ramirez said.

The Connally district had two campuses that met the state’s takeover threshold: Connally Junior High and Connally Elementary. Since the 2022-23 school year, the number of campuses with academically unacceptable scores in the district has doubled, Morath noted. Only 24% of students in the district are meeting grade level. The junior high improved from an F to a D in the most recent ratings.

In a statement, the Connally district thanked the efforts of Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe in boosting academic performance in recent years but acknowledged the need for improvements.

“We recognize that there is still work that needs to be done,” the statement said. “It is our hope that the appointed Board of Managers will work to not only improve our district’s academic performance, but also serve our community with the same passion and sincerity as our Board of Trustees has.”

ML King Middle School and Fehl-Price Elementary in the Beaumont district have also endured five consecutive years of failing grades. The commissioner cited data showing that the elementary school has never earned an acceptable rating, while the middle school has gone 11 years without one. The district has seven campuses with unacceptable ratings for more than a year and has not earned an overall acceptable rating since 2019. Thirty percent of students in the district are meeting grade level.

Thomas Sigee Sr., president of the Beaumont school board, said the district had sought to help its struggling campuses — including by partnering with charter schools — but ultimately could not lift them up to state standards. He questioned why the commissioner opted to take over the entire district instead of shutting down the schools.

“We could have closed the schools for a year and facilitated those students to other campuses and go forward,” Sigee said. “I didn’t want the takeover because I knew it would spread chaos in our community.”

If the decision is finalized, it would mark the second time the state has placed the Beaumont district under its oversight. The education agency did so from 2014-2020 due to financial mismanagement.

Each of the three districts will have opportunities later this month to attend an informal hearing with the commissioner to make their appeals. If Morath stands by his decision to intervene, they can then formally appeal to the State Office of Administrative Hearings.

Takeovers were once rare in Texas, but they have grown more common in the last decade, thanks to the 2015 law that made it easier for the state to step in after five consecutive F grades. It also expanded the commissioner’s ability to initiate special investigations, which could lead to an intervention.

That A-F grading system is largely based on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, a standardized exam that lawmakers voted this year to replace in 2027.

Before 2015, El Paso experienced the only academic takeover in Texas, due to a widespread cheating scandal. Since the law’s passage, the education agency has officially taken over three districts because of low academic performance: Marlin, Shepherd and Houston.

Morath and state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles believe the Houston ISD intervention was warranted, and they tout as evidence the improved test scores in the two years since it started. Students have improved in every tested subject. None of the district’s campuses received an F on the state’s accountability ratings in the 2024-25 school year, a drastic improvement from the 56 underperforming campuses in 2022-23.

But the intervention has also run into strong criticism. Teacher departures have skyrocketed. Thousands of students have unenrolled. And improved test scores have sparked concern that the district has accomplished its gains, in part, because of a hyperfocus on testing and moving students into less rigorous math and science classes.

Stephen Simpson, Jess Huff and Alex Nguyen contributed to this report.