We feel your pain, Fort Worth ISD.
Nearly 300 people want a seat on the Texas-appointed board replacing FWISD’s nine locally elected trustees, but none of their names are publicly known.
The Fort Worth Report requested the list of applicants seeking to serve on the board of managers through Texas’ open records law. Agency officials declined to release it, requesting an opinion from the Texas attorney general’s office.
That lack of transparency frustrates Fort Worth parents and residents as Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath prepares to appoint the managers in the coming weeks. The appointees will govern the district during the state takeover intended to bring significant academic gains for students.
Fort Worth mother Kelly Moreno is anxious that she doesn’t know who may be positioned to guide schools and how changes could impact her children in kindergarten and second grade.
“I have no idea when we’re going to have a board of managers,” she said. “Where are they at in the process? Have they selected anyone? I don’t know. And I stay more informed than most.”
The Report sought records for communications about the selection process that produced one email regarding questions and comments collected from a town hall hosted by a Fort Worth state legislator. Morath’s calendar entries during key decision periods were heavily redacted. Texas Education Agency officials said the records were withheld because they are part of a “pending audit” related to the Fort Worth ISD takeover, arguing that the applications and related communications qualify as protected audit working papers under state law.
Bill Aleshire, who helped write the state’s public information law, said applications for appointed school boards are not typically exempt from public disclosure — even during a state takeover.
“When a board is appointed instead of elected, it’s all the more important for the public to know who they are and to be able to vet them,” he said. “You can’t do that unless you see who is being considered before the appointment is made.”
The Texas Education Agency is waiting for a determination on what it can release in response to a Report records request about who applied for the board of managers, spokesperson Jake Kobersky said.
“Transparency is the north star — ensuring individuals interested in applying have the information they need while ensuring the broader community is apprised of all steps in the intervention process,” he said.
Transparency becomes more important, not less, when elected trustees are replaced with appointed managers, Aleshire said. While state education intervention laws may justify replacing elected trustees in struggling districts, they should not limit public knowledge about who may assume governing authority, he said.
“They should interfere with the public’s knowledge and input to the minimal extent possible,” he said. “Keeping the applicants secret until after appointment — that’s outrageous.”
Joe Larsen, a Texas media attorney who frequently represents requestors under the state’s Public Information Act, said the agency’s reasoning appears thin.
“I could find no instance where an application like that was considered part of an audit,” Larsen said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
[…]
Agency officials took a different approach when Morath launched the Houston takeover. A specific timeline for appointments was established. Racial and location breakdowns of manager applicants were issued. All 462 names of applicants were released — two months before the commissioner announced his appointments.
A shorter list of 227 people who completed the required governance training was released in May 2023 after the Houston Chronicle filed an open records request for the information. The Report filed a similar request for FWISD applicants who completed governance training.
“Why don’t they have that level of public transparency that they had in Houston?” Shannon said.
Larsen also questioned why the agency would depart from its approach in Houston ISD.
“The whole point of a takeover is to restore public confidence,” Larsen said. “The only way you’re going to do that is by bringing the public on board.”
TEA officials did not respond directly to questions from the Report about why information was released in Houston but not in Fort Worth.
Agency officials did not disclose board of manager applicants for El Paso when the state took it over in 2013; for Beaumont in 2014; for La Joya in 2023; and for South San Antonio in 2024. Beaumont was taken over again in 2025, and the agency has not disclosed manager candidates.
See here, here, and here for some recent updates. I’m glad the Fort Worth Report noted how it was different with HISD – I was screaming internally about that until I reached that paragraph. I’m a little surprised that the disclosures in the HISD appointment process seems to have been the exception. I’m not an expert in the law here but it’s hard to see what the justification for the secrecy may be. These folks are applying for a public position. Tell us who they are. And despite that shining example of transparency with the HISD Board of Managers – at least initially – it’s been all opacity and a failure to build trust or consensus at every opportunity since then. This sure doesn’t bode well for FWISD. I hope I’m wrong about that. Here’s a related story about the process in Lake Worth ISD if you want more.
UPDATE: And after all that fuss, we finally got a list of names. Why did this have to be done the hard way?