Texas declined Thursday to take over the Wichita Falls school district, which had been at risk of receiving the state’s most severe form of intervention over years of academic underperformance.
Kirby Middle School triggered the potential of a takeover. Under the state’s school accountability system, five consecutive years of unacceptable ratings at a single school allows the Texas Education Agency to replace a district’s locally elected school board with a state-selected board of managers or order the closure of the struggling campus.
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The district near the Texas-Oklahoma border had already informally closed Kirby Middle School in 2024 and moved its students to Hirschi Middle School to provide them with better facilities. Facing continued pressure from the state to improve academic performance, the district adopted state math materials and outsourced operations at Hirschi to Third Future Schools, a charter school network that focuses on turning around struggling schools.
After TEA Commissioner Mike Morath visited the district last month, he and Wichita Falls ISD agreed to formally close the obsolete Kirby campus and permit Hirschi to continue its partnership with Third Future Schools. The TEA will appoint a conservator to monitor the district’s progress and advise the superintendent and school board.
“TEA will continue to tightly monitor the district’s progress through the appointment of a conservator and the other conditions that the district agreed to,” said Jake Kobersky, a spokesperson for the agency. “The district must continue to improve academic outcomes for students to prevent a campus closure or Board of Managers appointment in the future.”
The district went from 11 academically unacceptable campuses in the 2022-23 school year to five in 2024-25. Donny Lee, the superintendent of Wichita Falls, said he expects there to be no failing campuses when accountability ratings are released later this year.
With Third Future Schools in charge, students experience stricter learning environments with longer school days. They are lined up and walked to their next class, and if there’s a disruption, students are removed from the classroom, Lee said.
“We’ll be able to continue operating under a locally elected school board. To say the least, we are thrilled,” Lee said at a Thursday board meeting. The announcement was met with applause.
Texas has increasingly relied on state interventions as a means to shape learning in public schools. The largest takeover is occurring at the Houston Independent School District, which has more than 183,000 students. There, the state appointed Mike Miles as superintendent. Miles, founder of Third Future Schools, has taken a strict approach to learning in Houston that led to academic improvements but has been widely controversial among families in the district.
Wichita Falls was among five districts that reached the threshold for state intervention after accountability ratings were released last year. The other four met a different fate: The TEA is in the process of replacing the elected school board of Fort Worth, as well as the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts. As part of the intervention, Fort Worth superintendent Karen Molinar told families this week that she won’t get to remain as superintendent.
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