Mark Ramirez announced his resignation at a board meeting Monday night. His last day will be March 13.

LAKE WORTH, Texas — Lake Worth school superintendent Mark Ramirez has resigned amid the ongoing state takeover of the Tarrant County school district, officials announced Tuesday.

Ramirez announced his resignation at a board meeting Monday night. His last day will be March 13, less than a year after he joined the district in May of last year.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced in December that it would be taking over operations of the district after all but one of its campuses received failing grades.

Despite the district’s struggles, parents and teachers urged state leaders to keep Ramirez with the district, saying the newly-hired superintendent helped with recent academic gains and improvements and was a “fresh start” for the district.

However, the TEA ultimately decided that Ramirez would be replaced, so his resignation this week did not come as a surprise.

Ramirez’s resignation comes a week after the TEA announced that Fort Worth Independent School District superintendent Karen Molinar would be replaced amid the Fort Worth district’s state takeover.

In a letter to Lake Worth ISD’s superintendent and board of trustees in December, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath wrote that he was ordering the appointment of a board of managers and a conservator to oversee the district after TEA conducted an analysis of district data and vetted its systems, leadership and student results.

Marilyn Miller Language Academy was notified in June 2025 that it was required to put the approved Campus Turnaround Plan in place during the upcoming school year, and could submit plan updates to the TEA. 

But then, that same year, the school earned its fifth consecutive unacceptable rating, a rating of “F.”

That same year, Morath wrote that every campus in the district earned a rating of either an F or a C. Five campuses earned an F rating, while one campus earned a C rating.

“Unacceptable academic performance in a single year represents significant academic weakness – typically less than one-third of students in those campuses reach grade level and less than one-half of students on those campuses demonstrate a year’s worth of academic growth,” Morath wrote. “When that unacceptable performance continues for multiple years, the children in those campuses develop significant academic gaps. Multi-year unacceptable ratings represent a school district’s most fundamental mission failure and a complete inability to take necessary action to provide a high quality education for students.”

Morath wrote that Lake Worth ISD has also shown a chronic inability to support students to achieve and learn at high levels, with only 24% of students across all district students meeting grade level, 28% below the state average. This is worse than in 2019, Morath said, when only 27% of the district’s students met grade level.