Not from the naming of the new Superintendent, but by the hiring of his deputy.
A top Houston ISD official is joining Fort Worth ISD as second-in-command as the Texas Education Agency prepares to take over the North Texas school district.
Daniel Soliz, an HISD area division chief, announced Tuesday he was “humbled and honored” to join as “deputy superintendent, chief of schools,” hours after the TEA appointed a new superintendent to lead Fort Worth ISD.
Soliz’s appointment signals Fort Worth ISD will likely implement many of the reforms HISD has adopted since its state takeover in 2023.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced in December that Fort Worth would lose its democratically elected school board and its hired superintendent because of years of failing ratings at a single campus. With more than 70,000 students, Fort Worth ISD is the second-largest district to undergo a takeover. HISD is the largest.
“Together, under the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Peter Licata, we will improve outcomes for all students,” Soliz wrote on LinkedIn.
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Soliz joined HISD in the summer of 2023. With his departure, HISD West Division Chief Kasey Bailey has assumed his position over the central division, putting her in charge of half of the district.
See here for the background. On the one hand, it’s the Superintendent who is the focal point and presumably the person with the vision and plan for what to do with FWISD to get it out of TEA jail. The opening word from Superintendent Licata, who by the way is similar to Mike Miles in that he also lacks a Texas Superintendent certification, seemed more along the lines of “there’s good work already going on here and we’re going to build on it” rather than anything transformative. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that you’d bring in a top Mike Miles lieutenant and then not run any part of the Mike Miles playbook. The situation is still hazy, but the hypothesis that the TEA sees the Mike Miles experience as the One True Way to rehab at least some type of school district remains plausible. Having a Board of Managers that doesn’t represent the schools and stakeholders that will be most directly affected seems of a piece, too.