Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath talks to the press following a tour of William James Middle School on Aug. 28, 2025, in Fort Worth.
Amanda McCoy
amccoy@star-telegram.com
Amid a pending state takeover of the Fort Worth Independent School District, the Texas Education Agency has declined to release similar background information for superintendent candidates that it had already released for board of managers candidates.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath recently announced he’s planning to share his Fort Worth ISD appointments for the board of managers and a new superintendent “in the coming weeks.” The replacement of district leaders comes after a 10-month saga involving appeals from the district attempting to stop state intervention, which was triggered by a campus receiving five failed accountability ratings in a row from the state.
Although some information about board of managers applicants has been released, details on superintendent candidates have mostly remained under wraps. In early March, Morath announced current Superintendent Karen Molinar, who applied to keep her job amid the takeover, will be replaced.
What information has, and hasn’t, been shared?
In early December, TEA shared details about the search for nine appointees who will replace the current elected school board, breaking down the total number of applications into demographic categories such as sex, residency inside or outside district boundaries, and levels of education. Out of the 286 original applicants, the list of finalists has been shaved down to 21, according to one of the finalists.
On Feb. 18, the Star-Telegram filed a public information request to TEA asking for similar information from the agency’s nationwide superintendent search. The request asked for the total number of superintendent applicants broken down by the following categories:
MaleFemaleReside in TexasReside outside of TexasFormer Fort Worth ISD employeeCurrent Fort Worth ISD employeeCurrent superintendentFormer superintendent Current school board memberFormer school board memberBachelor’s degreeMaster’s degreeDoctorate degree
On March 4, TEA sent the request to the Office of the Attorney General stating the information is protected from public disclosure because it’s part of “audit working papers,” or information involving TEA’s audit into Fort Worth ISD’s academic performance and related intervention.
State officials also cited a government code that protects names of superintendent applicants from public release. TEA argued this extends to “not only the name of the individual, but also to any information tending to identify the individual,” referring to a previous open records decision.
TEA officials did not respond to a request for comment when asked to elaborate on the denial of the release of information.
Attorneys, First Amendment advocates raise questions about denial
Attorney Bill Aleshire, who focuses on government transparency and accountability in Texas, said he doesn’t see how someone could be identified by the release of information outlined in the Star-Telegram’s request.
“I don’t see any way someone can take the mere statistical information that (the Star-Telegram has) asked for and identify who any applicant is,” Aleshire said. “Also, I can see value to the public to know statistical information about who is applying.”
He also called it “quite a stretch” for state officials to cite “audit working papers.”
Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, also used the same wording to describe the audit citing.
“That seems like a stretch. An audit is not the same as running a whole school district and picking a superintendent. An audit has to do with financial affairs and looking at some specific issues in a district. What we’re talking about here is how the whole school district is going to be run and governed,” Shannon said.
Additional transparency should be exercised, not less, when a state takeover is happening, she added.
“If the state is taking over a school district, seemingly it’s to improve the situation, make things even more transparent for the public and serve the public good. So the state should be even more expansive than is required in a regular school district search. They need to be open and transparent, informing the public every step of the way,” Shannon said.
The overlap in processes for public information release and state takeovers in Texas is a fairly new concept. It will take time for case law to catch up and determine how they interact with each other, said Tom Leatherbury, director of the First Amendment Clinic and clinical professor of law at Southern Methodist University.
Leatherbury noted there wouldn’t necessarily be a legal precedent for releasing information about superintendent candidates that’s similar to the board of managers candidates because it appears to be provided voluntarily. Aleshire said the searches for the different positions are in separate scopes of the law.
“Does the fact that the state is auditing and taking over these school districts reduce transparency in Texas and limit the amount of information that parents and other interested citizens, taxpayers who fund the public schools should be getting — But they can’t get it anymore because the state has intervened and asserted new exceptions to the (Texas) Public Information Act?” Leatherbury said. “I think the law is going to have to catch up with the relatively recent overriding of local control of school districts.”
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Lina Ruiz covers early childhood education in Tarrant County and North Texas for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A University of Florida graduate, she previously wrote about local government in South Florida for TCPalm and Treasure Coast Newspapers.