Students in bilingual and special education services will not see a reduction in support as Fort Worth ISD undergoes a wide-sweeping restructuring, Superintendent Peter Licata said Monday.
“We are not reducing services. We are not reducing bilingual services. We are not reducing special education services,” Licata said. “Actually, it probably will increase, if anything.”
The state-appointed board of managers will vote Tuesday on a reduction in force that will pave the way for an operations overhaul that Licata said will bring services closer to students rather than keeping them in central administration.
Licata said he has heard from parents and other community members about the proposed reductions, including the closure of International Newcomer Academy, and understands their anxiety. However, FWISD’s current structure has produced one of the worst-performing urban districts in Texas, and it cannot continue in its current form, he said.
The superintendent compared the district to a house in need of repairs.
“We can’t just fix it by rearranging furniture,” Licata said. “In order to do whole adjustments and provide services that are more intensely focused — additional services, targeted services — we have to start from scratch.”
FWISD — ranging from the number of campuses to services and central administration — is built for 90,000 students, while enrollment is projected at around 66,500 next year, Licata said.
“We can’t continue to pay for all these systems that aren’t successful but are paying for kids that we don’t have,” Licata said. “That’s taking away from the students we have.”
Bilingual and special education services will move under each of the district’s four regional chiefs who oversee schools, mirroring a model the superintendent used at his previous districts in Florida. Regional chiefs will see issues among students up close and address them immediately rather than waiting on an administrator based out of the District Service Center, Licata said.
“What you’re seeing is a model move closer to the schools, more school-based,” he said.
The reduction impacts three departments in central administration, International Newcomer Academy and 32 position types, according to board documents.
FWISD has a hiring fair this weekend that impacted employees may attend.
Some in community oppose plan
Some parents and community members are organizing against the proposed staff reductions. Families Organized Resisting Takeover, or FORT, has spent recent days encouraging people to sign up to speak at Tuesday’s meeting and send messages to the district’s state-appointed leadership.
“At its core, this plan asks stakeholders to accept major structural changes based on general assurances rather than a transparent, detailed strategy. For a decision of this magnitude, that is not enough,” reads a letter prepared by FORT.
The closure of International Newcomer Academy has been a focal point for organizers, who say the school should not be shuttered because of its three decades of helping newly immigrated students adjust to the United States.
Licata said he has visited the school, talked with teachers and observed classrooms where great teaching is happening. However, International Newcomer Academy has underperformed in recent years, including receiving a D rating in 2025 and F’s in 2024 and 2023.
This year, FWISD spent $20,131 on each of the 232 students enrolled at International Newcomer Academy, according to Texas Education Agency data. On average, the district spent $16,435 on each of its 67,315 students.
The cost of operating the underperforming school is too high, Licata said. He emphasized he does not want to segregate and isolate students who don’t speak English. In his experience, he said, immersing students in a school with other children has been successful.
Parents of special education students concerned
Jill Jorgensen, president of the Fort Worth ISD Special Education PTA, said the elimination of part-time speech-language pathology assistants and other support staff has created anxiety among parents — particularly those whose children rely on consistent providers.
The district has told families it plans to shift toward more full-time positions, Jorgensen said, including hosting hiring fairs focused on special education in the coming weeks. But that message came too late, she said.
“I think they caused a lot of this trouble by not saying, ‘Listen, we’re eliminating these (part-time) positions and we are adding ‘X’ number of full-time positions,’” she said. “They could have made it a little easier on themselves.”
The rollout of the reduction was done quickly because employment contracts include dates for renewals and termination, Licata said. The district has rehired many teachers who were affected by a previous staff reduction at 25 schools.
Even before the proposed restructuring, Jorgensen said some students were not consistently receiving the services outlined in their individualized education programs.
“My own daughter, particularly with speech — she’s autistic and she needs speech services — it’s something like two 20-minute sessions every six weeks, which is not enough,” she said. “So I’m feeling like we were already understaffed, and then eliminating these positions — it’s a hard sell to our families.”
Families are looking for specifics, not just assurances. Still, Jorgensen said she is willing to give district leaders time to follow through.
“I’m choosing to extend a little bit of faith to see how that plays out,” she said, adding that longtime special education staffers and manager Laurie George, who served on the Special Education PTA, have the students’ best interests at heart.
Disclosure: FWISD manager Pete Geren leads the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. FWISD manager Laurie George is a member of the Report’s reader advisory council. FWISD manager Courtney Lewis is a member of the Report’s business advisory council. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Education reporter Matthew Sgroi contributed.
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
