applications from district residents who are interested in serving on the board<\/a>. As of last Friday, more than 100 people had submitted applications, Lecholop said, and more than 700 others had started filling out an application but hadn\u2019t completed it.<\/p>\nMorath notified the district Thursday that he planned to move forward with the takeover, despite arguments that board members and district leaders presented at an informal meeting last week. Morath also notified the district that he will appoint Christopher Ruszkowski, the former New Mexico Secretary of Education, as the district\u2019s conservator. In that role, Ruzkowski will oversee turnaround efforts in the district, including directing or possibly overruling actions of the superintendent and other district leaders.<\/p>\n
The informal meeting represents the first layer in the appeals process the district is entitled to avail itself of, Lecholop said. The district may also request a formal review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings. District officials haven\u2019t said whether they plan to request such a hearing. In a statement in response to Morath\u2019s letter, Roxanne Martinez, president of the district\u2019s elected board, said the board \u201cwill consider all options.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several speakers expressed concern that Fort Worth ISD would see the level of teacher and principal turnover that has happened in Houston ISD. Zach Leonard, leader of the advocacy group Families Organized Resisting Takeover, asked whether the TEA would bring Houston Superintendent Mike Miles\u2019 New Education System to Fort Worth. TEA officials have credited the strategy with helping students make big gains on the state test, but students, parents and teachers in Houston have said it relies too much on scripted lessons that leave no room for teachers to tailor their instruction to their students\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
Lecholop said all decisions on curriculum and instruction will come from the state-appointed board and superintendent, once they\u2019re in place. TEA won\u2019t take an active role in decisions about how the district governs itself, he said.<\/p>\n
Several speakers also took issue with what they saw as the undemocratic nature of the takeover. Lecholop acknowledged that the key feature of the process is removing a board elected by the community and replacing it with one hand-picked by Morath. Lecholop said the purpose of the appointed board is to \u201crecondition the community as to what an exemplary board looks, acts and sounds like.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only current student who spoke during Thursday\u2019s meeting was Jeremiah Taylor, a student at Young Men\u2019s Leadership Academy. Taylor sounded more optimistic about the prospect of state intervention. The district needs help, he said \u2014 its state test scores make that obvious. He pointed to the rapid improvement in test scores in Houston ISD, which also has a high concentration of students in low-income families.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re still able to accomplish that, I think maybe we can,\u201d he said. The final TEA community meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Fort Worth ISD Administration Building, 7060 Camp Bowie Blvd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fort Worth Independent School District is in a crisis with regard to academic achievement, a deputy state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[447,11477,24905,116,118,8257,117,7395,24904,24902,24901,24903],"class_list":{"0":"post-40716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-community","9":"tag-community-meeting","10":"tag-district-officials","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","13":"tag-fort-worth-isd","14":"tag-fort-worth-news","15":"tag-mike-morath","16":"tag-polytechnic-high-school","17":"tag-state-education-commissioner","18":"tag-steve-lecholop","19":"tag-town-hall-meeting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}