Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath interacts with students on their classwork in a science class at Lucyle Collins Middle School in Lake Worth on Oct. 21, 2025.
Christopher Torres
ctorres@star-telegram.com
Lake Worth school district Superintendent Mark Ramirez will step down after school board members accepted his resignation during a special board meeting Monday night.
Ramirez’s resignation comes amid a takeover from the Texas Education Agency after a school in the district received a fifth straight F rating in the state’s yearly A-F accountability grading. His last day is Friday.
During a takeover, the TEA is able to replace the superintendent, name a state-appointed board of managers to replace the existing school board and name a conservator to oversee the takeover process. TEA Commissioner Mike Morath announced in January that Andrew Kim, a former superintendent who was a co-conservator of an El Paso-area school district, has been named conservator for Lake Worth ISD.
Morath has not yet named a new permanent superintendent, and applications for the state-appointed board closed last month. Now, Lake Worth ISD’s current board members will have to name an interim superintendent during the board’s March 23 meeting. Morath is expected to name his chosen replacement in the coming months.
The TEA’s takeover of the district started in December, when Morath first said he was a fan of the work Ramirez had done at the district but declined to comment on whether he was a candidate to keep his post. But just weeks later, Morath announced Ramirez was not in contention for the job.
“If they had taken the steps to bring Dr. Ramirez in five years ago, I highly doubt we’d be having this conversation,” Morath said in a call with reporters following the takeover announcement in December.
The takeover could last for several years, until the district shows significant academic improvement. In January, the TEA held a community meeting at Lake Worth High School to answer questions from staff, parents and community members about the takeover process. Dozens of current teachers and parents pressed the state and urged TEA leaders to keep Ramirez as superintendent.
“This community is about to be flipped upside down,” said Chris Hollie, a truancy compliance facilitator for Lake Worth. “The community found somebody that actually cared about the community and you guys are going to strip the community of what we have found.”
A week after the community meeting, Lake Worth’s current school board announced at its Jan. 20 meeting it would not initiate an appeal process of the takeover, instead saying it was at fault for low performance across the district by not acting fast enough to hire Ramirez when the search began for the district’s new leader in September 2024. Ramirez was not hired until May 2025.
“From my perspective, the fault that the district is in lies in the hands of this board,” said current Board President Tammy Thomas at the meeting. “We were slow, very slow, in appointing a new superintendent while we had a school board election going on. Everyone is paying the price of the decisions that this board made, and now the board is going to be held accountable. I can only apologize for the board not doing our job.”
On Dec. 19, Lake Worth board members traveled to Austin for an “informal review” of the district by the TEA. In that meeting the school district made its case against the takeover process by providing data and information that showed the district was making positive steps forward. But Morath still affirmed his decision to take over Lake Worth ISD and name new leadership. After that, the board decided not to officially appeal.
Staff layoffs approved
The Lake Worth school board also approved staff layoffs during the special board session, but did not detail what jobs or how many would be cut as the district prepares to be taken over by the state.
Marilyn Miller Language Academy, the school that received the fifth straight F rating which triggered the state takeover in December, will undergo structural and personnel changes through an Accelerating Campus Excellence turnaround model supported by a state grant.
Board members also approved a plan to identify employment areas at the campus that will receive the layoffs, including core subject and elective teachers, special education and other professional positions. Staff affected by the cuts could be eligible to apply for other open positions.
This story was originally published March 10, 2026 at 12:55 PM.
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Samuel O’Neal is a local news reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram covering higher education and local news in Fort Worth. He joined the team in December 2025 after previously working as a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He graduated from Temple University, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the school’s student paper, The Temple News.