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.
Elected trustees replaced with appointees
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 provided periodic demographic summaries of the applicant pool — including broad breakdowns by gender and profession — but have not released applicants’ names.
Houston ISD board President Ric Campo was appointed by Morath during that district’s 2023 takeover. He said such managers derive authority from state officials rather than direct voter elections — a distinction he said is often misunderstood in takeover communities.
Districts that have at least one campus failing academic accountability ratings for five consecutive years can be taken over by the Texas education commissioner under legislation brought by state lawmakers in 2015 and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Because managers are not selected by local voters, Campo said he views his accountability as flowing through elected state officials who authorized takeovers, rather than directly to district residents.
“I think of myself as doing a job the state has asked me to do,” Campo said. “You elected the state Legislature, the governor. They passed this law.”
Morath has said he will reveal his appointees this spring. The evaluation and selection process for both superintendent and board of managers remains ongoing, Kobersky said.
The education commissioner has discussed district takeovers in recent months, according to his calendars obtained through a records request. However, specifics about who he met with and what those conversations were about were redacted. Texas Education Agency officials cited a portion of state law that blocks the records’ release if they are part of an ongoing audit.
“That seems like a stretch,” said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “If it’s a public calendar of an elected or appointed state official, their calendar ought to be publicly accessible when it comes to public business.”
‘Public confidence’
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.
Kobersky noted that in December, agency officials released Fort Worth applicant data that included gender; whether they lived in the district; their educational degrees; and whether they were parents, alumni, employees, superintendents, former and current trustees. About 80% of applicants live within FWISD and 95% live in Tarrant County, he said.
“The board of managers will be rooted in the same neighborhoods as the communities they will serve,” Kobersky said.
‘Our community deserves clear information’
FWISD board President Roxanne Martinez has heard from families and school employees who are concerned over the state’s ambiguity in the intervention, she said. They want to know specific criteria for how to measure the takeover’s success and when local control will return, she added.
“They are seeking answers from the current board, and we have none,” Martinez said. “Our community deserves clear information on not only how decisions are being made, but what the plan is.”
Kobersky pointed residents to the agency’s website with information about the FWISD board of managers, which includes an “ideal candidate profile” for those seeking to serve on the board of managers. Attributes include being student-centered, collaborative, strategic thinkers who are knowledgeable about classroom instruction and committed to accountability and transparency.
Some who want to serve on the Fort Worth board of managers are also frustrated, saying the lack of transparency limits public accountability before appointments are made.
Kal Silverberg, a railroad consultant and longtime Tarrant County election judge who applied to serve, said residents should be able to see who is seeking authority over the district.
“It hasn’t been as transparent as I’d like,” Silverberg said. “It’s a government operation that should be subject to open meetings laws and open records requirements.”
Silverberg and Martinez said the agency should have hosted more community meetings, a step that would have started building trust. Texas Education Agency officials had two community meetings on the takeover: one at Polytechnic High School and the other at the FWISD headquarters.
“In addition to the community meetings hosted by TEA and a town hall hosted by state Rep. Nicole Collier, Commissioner Morath and agency staff have conducted multiple meetings with community, parent and stakeholder groups to answer questions and explain the intervention process,” Kobersky said.
For example, Morath held meetings following his tour of FWISD schools on Aug. 28, according to his calendar. Most recently he attended a private CEO roundtable in Fort Worth.
Martinez, who represents a predominantly Latino area in north Fort Worth, attended the meeting at the FWISD headquarters.
“It was not representative of our entire district,” she said. “I didn’t see people from my community there.”
The size, locations and time of the meetings prevented a larger slice of district residents from showing up, Silverberg said.
“That spoke a lot to how this process is being handled,” Martinez said. “There is a lack of transparency, but also I would probably guess they had a hard time reaching a good representation of the district.”
Elected trustees operate under strict accountability requirements — including financial disclosures, campaign reporting and elections — standards she said should also guide how the state selects managers.
“It is very contradictory to not see any level of openness from the state,” she said.
Kobersky emphasized the superintendent and board of managers will be subject to all state and federal laws, including the Texas Open Meetings Act and Texas Public Information Act.
Appointments in Houston
Anita Wadhwa, a Houston educator and nonprofit leader who applied but was not selected, described similar uncertainty about how selections were made during Houston ISD’s process.
Though names were public in Houston, she said communities still had little visibility into how finalists were chosen.
“There’s no transparency in selection,” she said. “Zero.”
Texas Education Agency officials generally follow a similar roadmap during each intervention with tweaks tailored to each community, Kobersky said. They routinely examine the takeover process, including application, interviews, training and community meetings.
The agency’s outreach efforts in Houston met the needs of community members, Kobersky said. He did not provide specifics.
In June 2023, Morath unveiled his appointees for the Houston board of managers. They mostly included parents with students in the district, racially diverse but not geographically and a variety of professional backgrounds. One of the nine members was an educator. Seven members lived in affluent Houston neighborhoods, the Houston Landing reported.
In November, Deputy Commissioner Steve Lecholop told Fort Worth parents that agency officials are trying to apply lessons learned from Houston, including the need for clearer communication and earlier family engagement.
“My hope,” Lecholop said, “is it happened better here.”
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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