New Fort Worth schools leader praised for academics, chided for equity efforts in Midland
Parents, teachers and school leaders in Midland have mixed emotions about Angelica Ramsey, the district’s superintendent leaving after just over a year on the job.
“I wish that we would have kept her here longer,” Midland school board President Bryan Murry said. “I mean we had just signed a new contract, and bumped her up … and we would love to have her here longer.”
Murry praised Ramsey for overhauling the district’s central office, now called the service center, and helping focus the district’s energy on campuses — which increased in ratings, according to the recent accountability scores.
Others were more critical of her leaving so soon into her contract and that she worked to expand diversity, equity and inclusion in the district.
“She needs to be held accountable for signing till 2025, that’s what fulfilling the contract is about,” one parent commented on social media.
Murry said she had every intention of staying when she joined the district.
“One of her key pillars is integrity and I think when she said that she fully intended to be here,” he said, adding that she was building a house in Midland.
According to Murry, Ramsey has family in the Fort Worth area and attends a church in the region that she would watch online from Midland.
Ramsey told the Midland Reporter-Telegram that she “couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” she said. “I wasn’t looking to leave.”
Ramsey called a hands-on leader
Both Midland and Fort Worth board members said they chose Ramsey for her focus on students and classrooms.
“When we hired her, we were looking for someone to come in here that understood the culture of the classroom, and was teacher-friendly and could really develop a team around what was going on on campus,” Murry said. “And Dr. Ramsey just kind of started checking boxes and made everything pretty easy when we got down to the point where it was time to make a selection.”
Fort Worth school board member Wallace Bridges said the same thing before voting to approve her at an August special board meeting.
“In the interviewing process I had this checklist of things because it was so important to me. And as you began to talk I could literally check off the things that the people in my community were talking about that teachers were talking about,” he said.
Every week Ramsey spent two days visiting campuses across the Midland school district, a practice she said she would replicate when she begins in Fort Worth, Murry said.
“She would spend so much time at probably five campuses a day, and be in and out of classrooms and helping teachers and basically helping principals,” Murry said.
While the 76,600-student Fort Worth district is more than double the size of Midland, Murry said the job was about managing systems and processes.
“It is economies of scale,” he said. “You’ve obviously, two and a half to three times more students there., but the key things in her model are professional development for teachers getting support for teachers. At the end of the day whether you’re doing that for one classroom or three, it is kind of the same process.”
Ramsey was also deeply involved in the community as a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Midland Education Foundation, Boys and Girls Club of Midland and the Boys Scouts of America.
Murry and district leaders said she was accessible, starting three advisory committees . She regularly met with staff, teachers and residents.
“She preferred it this way,” Murry said. “When the community had questions that they come to her and let her work through her team to get answers and or if it was something that she could answer directly she would.”
Bridges, the Fort Worth school board member, said he heard the same things when speaking to Midland community members.
Some parents criticize priorities
Ramsey is already thinking about ways to reach out to a vocal group of parents, former students and residents who spoke out against her at the meeting where she was formally announced as the lone finalist for superintendent. Some are already calling for her resignation before she even officially takes the role a month from now.
“I hope those will give me an opportunity to meet with them,” Ramsey told the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “And talk through how I actually work.”
A similar group of parents spoke out against Ramsey’s tenure in Midland at a special board meeting held Thursday to discuss her employment.
Sarah Hale, who had someone read comments she wrote at the meeting, said she regularly met with Ramsey when she first arrived in Midland — and had a friendly relationship.
“She comes across as a likable person, when she first came, she met with me right off the bat, and I would have considered her a friend at that time,” Hale told the Star-Telegram.
Fort Worth school board President Tobi Jackson said that is one of the attributes she most liked about the lone finalist — her ability to bring people to the table.
But after repeated protests of the curriculum being used in Midland classrooms and criticism of the district’s use of social emotional learning, Hale said she stopped hearing from Ramsey.
“We showed up to a meeting and she did not,” she said. “She sent the attorney instead.”
Initiatives will continue
Despite the concern of parents in both districts, the unanimous vote of the board and support from key leaders are signs of what is to come in Fort Worth.
Kara Waddell, the CEO of Child Care Associates, said she looks forward to the expansion of early childhood education in the district under the new leader.
The district began plans to expand into infant and toddler care under outgoing leader Kent Scribner.
“Fort Worth ISD has been a longtime partner of Child Care Associates’ in providing whole-child, whole-family early learning opportunities for prekindergarten through our joint PreK-Head Start partnership,” Waddell said in a statement. “CCA has been pleased to see FWISD’s movement in recent years towards creating child-centered environments with play-based learning for prekindergarten students.”
In the coming years, the organization hopes “to work alongside Dr. Ramsey and FWISD to build on this momentum to create a coordinated early learning system that supports all young children birth to age 5, regardless of whether they are enrolled in Fort Worth ISD schools or a community-based early learning program.”
This story was originally published September 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
CORRECTION: The Fort Worth school district began its universal pre-kindergarten program before the arrival of former superintendent Kent Scribner. The timing was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
