Former Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Karen Molinar will stay in Tarrant County education.
Rev Partnership announced Tuesday that Molinar started Monday as the regional education nonprofit’s first CEO, four months after she left FWISD as the district moved under state-appointed leadership.
The job offered Molinar — who spent nearly three decades in FWISD — a way to keep working in the community where she built her career.
“I wanted to serve this city and this community,” Molinar told the Fort Worth Report. “I’m not leaving. I’m not moving.”
Founded in 2022, Rev Partnership connects 17 Tarrant County school districts around shared priorities, including teacher quality and early learning. Its work impacts about 750,000 students across the county, according to the organization.
The position was a no-brainer, Molinar said, because it allows her to continue working with superintendents and district teams across Tarrant County.
“This was the perfect, perfect opportunity to continue what I love to do,” Molinar said, “and that’s to serve students.”
Molinar most recently served as FWISD superintendent before the Texas Education Agency installed a board of managers and appointed Peter Licata to lead the district. The state takeover followed years of low academic performance and five consecutive failing ratings at Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade, the campus that triggered state intervention.
Going through that process reinforced the need for communication and transparency, Molinar said.
“That is something I stand by,” Molinar said. “Our community wants it, needs it.”
She said she supports Licata’s leadership and the changes he is making in FWISD “to make sure our students succeed here in the Fort Worth ISD.”
Molinar pointed to a broad principle: putting students first.
“At every decision, whether it’s curriculum, academic or budget,” Molinar said. “Students must come first at all times.”
Rev Partnership, which began building relationships among Tarrant County superintendents from its outset, will work with districts under state-appointed leadership. Fort Worth ISD and Lake Worth ISD are both operating under state intervention, meaning two Tarrant County districts are no longer governed by locally elected boards.
The nonprofit can provide regional support to districts with new leaders, including those who are still learning Tarrant County, Molinar said.
“We learn better from each other,” Molinar said. “I know they have different parameters that they’re governing under right now under state takeover, but they’re still Tarrant County.”
Elizabeth Brands, founder and board chair of Rev Partnership and president and CEO of The Morris Foundation, said the state interventions in FWISD and Lake Worth ISD did not drive the nonprofit’s decision to create a CEO position or hire Molinar.
“We knew that whoever we brought in as the CEO, it necessitated that they would be a trusted peer and colleague with our superintendents because that coalition is at the heart of everything we do,” Brands said.
Molinar fit that role, Brands said. She’s worked at multiple levels of a public school system and maintained relationships with other district leaders.
“She has sat in the same seat that they have,” Brands said.
Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD Superintendent Joe Harrington, a Tarrant County district administrator involved with Rev Partnership, called Molinar a “thoughtful, collaborative and mission-driven leader” who knows how to bring people together around a shared vision.
As CEO, Molinar will be responsible for Rev Partnership’s daily operations, staff and regional strategy. Brands will remain involved as founder and board chair.
Molinar will not run local school districts, she said. That work remains with superintendents.
“But I can help bring in support,” she said.
That support will focus on Rev Partnership’s two main priorities: great teachers and great starts for students.
One of Molinar’s early focuses will be teacher residency and preparation programs, including keeping regional graduates who earn teaching degrees in Tarrant County classrooms. She also wants to support high school students already interested in education careers.
“We need to keep them here in Tarrant County to become teachers,” Molinar said.
Rev Partnership’s work also includes early learning and kindergarten readiness. Superintendents across the county have agreed that fully enrolled, high-quality preschool programs are critical to what happens later in a child’s education, Brands said.
Rev Partnership’s superintendents have already worked together on teacher quality initiatives. Those include increasing the number of educators with student growth and performance metrics tied to their work and creating a regional induction framework for career and technical education teachers, Brands said.
Molinar also sees a role for Rev Partnership in Austin.
As one of the largest regions in Texas, Tarrant County should have a stronger voice in public education policy and rulemaking, she said, as state rules can affect districts as much as legislation.
“How can we also have a voice and help our lawmakers understand the impact of rulemaking on our school districts?” Molinar said.
Rev Partnership’s regional work gives Tarrant County districts a chance to speak collectively to state decision-makers, Brands said.
“We cannot be working separately as independent, separate districts,” Brands said. “We need to think about what are the collective challenges that we all share.”
Rev Partnership’s work will become more public-facing as Molinar steps into the CEO role, she said. The organization wants more people to understand what it does and how it supports districts.
The new role is also personal for Molinar. She and her husband decided after her FWISD departure that they wanted to remain in Fort Worth, she said.
“There’s so much work to be done,” Molinar said. “I have a lot more to give, and I’m excited to do that with Rev Partnership.”
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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. News decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
