The Texas Education Agency is replacing the elected school boards of the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Thursday.
State law allows Morath to either close a campus or appoint new leadership if at least one school in the district receives five consecutive failing grades in Texas’ academic accountability system. Each of the districts met that threshold.
The takeovers add to the growing list of districts subject to state interventions, which also includes two of Texas’ largest: Fort Worth and Houston. The Fort Worth school board has said it plans to appeal the commissioner’s decision, which was announced in October.
The education agency said in August that five school districts were at risk of intervention after enduring five consecutive years of unsatisfactory ratings. Since then, it has announced plans to take over four of them: Fort Worth, Lake Worth, Connally and Beaumont ISDs. Morath has not said whether he plans to intervene in the fifth one, Wichita ISD.
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Before 2015, El Paso experienced the only academic takeover in Texas, due to a widespread cheating scandal. Since the law’s passage, the education agency has officially taken over three districts because of low academic performance: Marlin, Shepherd and Houston.
I don’t know anything about the Marlin and Shepherd ISD takeovers, which were already in place when HISD was assimilated. In particular, I have no idea how they’re doing post-takeover or if they’ve gone through even a small fraction of the turmoil we’ve had to put up with. I don’t have the time to research that now, but I’ll put a pin in it for later.
Of the three latest takeovers, I’m most familiar with Lake Worth ISD, which managed to oust a bad Trustee in November, for all the good that will do now. The Fort Worth Report takes a closer look at this district.
Lake Worth schools will be under the control of state-appointed managers while Superintendent Mark Ramirez’s future remains uncertain after Texas officials announced a takeover of the 3,200-student district Thursday.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath will install a new board of managers and appoint a superintendent in the coming months, tasking them with reversing years of academic decline. In a letter to Lake Worth leaders, Morath attributed the district’s persistently low academics to failure of governance.
“I do not make this decision lightly,” Morath wrote. “The inability of the district to implement effective changes to improve the performance of students in the district or at the campus necessitates the interventions announced by this letter.”
Morath’s decision comes after Lake Worth’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy failed to meet state academic standards for five consecutive years, triggering a Texas law that requires the commissioner to either close the campus or replace district leadership.
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The state’s move follows a near decade of academic underperformance, shrinking enrollment and recent leadership changes that left Lake Worth schools vulnerable to intervention.
“Beyond the performance of individual campuses that are unacceptable, Lake Worth ISD has demonstrated a chronic inability to support students to learn and achieve at high levels,” Morath wrote in the letter sent to district officials Dec. 11.
The immediate trigger was Marilyn Miller Language Academy, an elementary campus of about 500 students where 91% come from low-income families and nearly half are learning English.
The school has failed to earn an acceptable accountability rating for eight years, dating back to 2017, including a 59 in this year’s ratings — just one point shy of passing.
Under state law, once a school reaches five straight failing ratings, the commissioner must either close the campus or install a state-appointed board of managers. At Miller Language Academy, those five ratings were reached with the release of the 2025 scores, officials said.
Ratings labeled “Not Rated” during the pandemic did not break the chain of unacceptable performance, TEA officials said, and enforcement actions tied to the five-year threshold resumed once ratings were publicly released again.
Districtwide results gave Morath further reason to act.
In 2025, five of Lake Worth ISD’s six campuses received an F rating. Only the high school managed a C. Overall, the district improved from an F to a D but still ranked near the bottom of Tarrant County in reading and math proficiency. State officials cited data showing just 22% of students meeting grade level, well below the state average of about 50%.
Enrollment declines deepened the crisis.
Just before the pandemic in 2020, the district enrolled nearly 3,600 students. This fall, that number fell to about 3,250 — a loss of nearly 10% in five years.
It’s hard to defend Lake Worth ISD based on its schools’ performance, though you have to wonder how much of that is a resources issue in a district that has the demographics it does. I suppose the takeover is one way to find out, especially if they get some extra funding and throw a bunch of money at the problem, as HISD has largely done. Lake Worth may get to keep their newish Superintendent, whom Morath went out of his way to praise at the press conference. Good luck, y’all, that’s all I can say.
I’m also interested in what happens in Beaumont.
“I am very disappointed by this decision,” Dr. Shannon Allen said at a BISD press conference on Thursday evening, adding that the announcement of the takeover was an unexpected one.
“This action was triggered by law due to consecutive unacceptable ratings at two campuses, MLK Middle School and Fehl-Price Elementary School,” Allen said. “Despite the fact that King was closed in 2024 and Fehl-Price Elementary was operated by Third Future Schools for the past two years … the commissioner made a decision to move forward with this appointment.”
As part of the TEA takeover, the agency will appoint a board of managers and a conservator in place of the superintendent and the elected school board.
Jackie Simien, director of community and media relations for BISD told Chron that Allen received a letter from the TEA with the official decision earlier on Thursday and spoke directly with Commissioner Mike Morath.
“We’ve been making progress and this year I’ve shared with our community that 16 out of 22 of our campuses showed an increase in overall accountability ratings. The effort and the work matter,” Allen said. “At the same time we recognize that the improvement has not happened fast enough in every single school.”
Simien told Chron the BISD has 30 days to appeal the decision.
As part of Thursday’s press conference, Allen said she will discuss the opportunity to appeal with her board.
TEA previously took control of the Beaumont ISD in 2014 due to financial scandal and shortfalls which left the district in a budget emergency, according to the Beaumont Enterprise. Control was returned to the district in 2020.
Fort Worth ISD has appealed its takeover as well, with no ruling yet. Once again I say, good luck with that. BISD had almost 17,000 students as of 2023-24, much smaller than HISD or Fort Worth ISD but bigger than the others in the crosshairs. If nothing else, we’ll have a lot more data about how these takeovers do and don’t work. The Beaumont Enterprise has more.
UPDATE: As soon as I finished this post, I saw this story about Connally ISD.
In a statement, Morath said multiple years of failing grades at Connally Elementary School and Connally Junior High School represent a “fundamental mission failure and a complete inability to take necessary action to ensure a high quality education for students.”
He said the timeline of the takeover has yet to be announced, and the current board of trustees and the superintendent, Jill Bottelberghe, will remain in place until he chooses new leadership.
In a statement, Connally ISD did not contest the takeover decision but pointed to district improvements over the last two years under Bottelberghe.
“Ms. Bottelberghe remains fully committed to these improvement initiatives and will continue to oversee them as the district’s superintendent until the TEA appoints a replacement,” the statement reads. “While we are supremely proud of the progress that we have made, we recognize that there is still work that needs to be done.”
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Connally Junior High received its fifth consecutive F grade in 2024, but the state did not publicly release the ratings until earlier this year. Several districts had sued the state over changes to the accountability system, effectively pausing the results until a judge recently ruled in Texas’ favor.
Connally Elementary School received its fifth consecutive F in the 2025 ratings.
The school district educates just over 2,200 mostly Black and Hispanic students. Roughly 84% of those students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which the state considers an indicator of poverty.
In a statement, Connally ISD did not contest the takeover decision but pointed to district improvements over the last two years under Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.
“Ms. Bottelberghe remains fully committed to these improvement initiatives and will continue to oversee them as the district’s superintendent until the TEA appoints a replacement,” the statement reads. “While we are supremely proud of the progress that we have made, we recognize that there is still work that needs to be done.
Good luck to y’all as well.