Fort Worth ISD, the state’s largest school district under a full Texas Education Agency takeover, is moving to close a campus and erase a tens-of-millions-dollar deficit as its appointed leadership tries to lift student outcomes fast enough to hand control back to an elected board.
New Superintendent Peter Licata, who was appointed by TEA alongside a nine-member Board of Managers on March 24, supports shuttering the International Newcomer Academy and moving its students into neighborhood schools, citing research favoring classroom immersion over separate campuses, according to WFAA.
Licata has told the board some tradeoffs are “going to be uncomfortable” as it weighs further staff reductions. He said officials have already trimmed roughly $40 million, largely by cutting vacant positions and curbing year-end spending, as reported by CBS Texas — even as the Fort Worth Report warns of a $49.8 million shortfall looming in 2026-27.
The financial triage is inseparable from the reason the state stepped in. Commissioner Mike Morath announced the intervention Oct. 23, 2025, citing chronic academic underperformance and a rising number of multi-year “academically unacceptable” campuses.
The action is required under House Bill 1842, the 2015 accountability law that forces a state takeover or campus closure when a school fails five straight years. Under HB 1842, TEA suspended the elected trustees’ authority and appointed the managers to govern until the district meets its exit criteria.
Those criteria are outcome-based and demanding. Per TEA, Fort Worth must reach zero multi-year unacceptable campuses, exceed the state or regional average for “Meets Grade Level” proficiency in reading and math, and have its board earn a “Meets” rating under the Lone Star Governance framework.
That is a steep climb: preliminary spring STAAR results showed Fort Worth students posting double-digit gains in algebra and biology and 4-to-5-point gains in English I, English II and U.S. history — outpacing statewide improvement — yet the district still trails the state by double digits in the share of students meeting grade level, and lags in grades three through eight in both reading and math, according to the Fort Worth Report.
TEA is scheduled to release official A-F accountability ratings in mid-August, the letter grades that will show whether Fort Worth’s campuses are climbing out of the “unacceptable” tier or remaining stuck in it. Those ratings, built largely on STAAR performance, are the metric that both triggered the takeover and now defines the path out.
Some Fort Worth parents have voiced fear of disruption by the state takeover, and the newcomer-academy closure has drawn opposition from families who see the campus as a lifeline for immigrant students. But the state’s guiding rationale is straightforward: children in five-year-failing schools cannot wait for a slow-moving local turnaround, and the accountability law leaves the commissioner little discretion once the threshold is crossed.