Fort Worth ISD wants to redirect $22.7 million toward reading, which will mean job cuts
The Fort Worth Independent School District is moving some of its highest-caliber educators back into the classroom to work directly with students as a part of a larger effort to refocus its efforts around improving literacy.
During a school board meeting Tuesday, Superintendent Karen Molinar outlined a plan to rework Fort Worth ISD’s staffing model to offer more direct support to students. The staffing changes represent one of several steps district leaders plan to take in the coming months in hopes of boosting reading performance. Taken together, the changes represent $22.7 million in district funding that’s being redirected toward literacy priorities.
Under the staffing plan, Fort Worth ISD will eliminate campus instructional coach, district content coach and dean of instruction positions. All of those roles involved providing support and guidance for teachers, but had little direct interaction with students. Beginning next year, the district will repurpose those positions as demonstration teacher jobs, Molinar said. Demonstration teachers will spend part of the day working directly with students and act as instructional coaches for other teachers during the rest of the day.
All Fort Worth ISD elementary schools will have one English language arts demonstration teacher while all secondary schools will have one English language arts and one math demonstration teacher each.
Molinar emphasized that every employee affected by the change will still have a job with the district. Those employees will be offered demonstration teacher jobs without needing to reapply, she said. They’ll also have the option of applying for other vacant positions in the district. Employees have until April 25 to decide. Many of those employees were some of Fort Worth ISD’s most effective teachers before they moved on to other roles, she said, so students stand to benefit when they return to the classroom.
The change represents a shift in where the district focuses most of its efforts, Molinar said. Up to now, the district’s approach focused primarily on teachers, she said, offering them instructional coaching to help them hone their skills. The staffers Fort Worth ISD hired to do those jobs did everything district leaders asked of them, Molinar said, but the strategy wasn’t working. She pointed to stagnant test scores and performance that lags behind other similar districts as an indication that the district needs to make a change to get students on grade level in reading and math.
Rather than continuing that strategy of supporting teachers and expecting test scores to improve as a result, Molinar said, Fort Worth ISD is shifting to a strategy of focusing that support on students, while still giving teachers the help they need to improve their craft.
The district has already seen the early signs of success with that strategy. Last fall, Molinar, who was serving as interim superintendent at the time, announced Fort Worth ISD would send central office employees to campuses to work directly with students who needed extra support. At schools where central office staffers worked, students who received tutoring made faster progress than those who didn’t, district figures showed.
Aside from the staffing change around demonstration teachers, the district will also cut several high-level administrative positions, Molinar said. Under Fort Worth ISD’s current organizational model, the district’s 12 executive directors report to three associate superintendents, who report to two deputy superintendents. The district will cut the three associate superintendent positions, Molinar said.
During the meeting, board members approved a resolution cutting those positions, as well as the positions the district plans to repurpose as demonstration teacher jobs.
In order to make these changes, the board had to approve a resolution that acknowledged a “reduction in force due to program change.” It lists at least 19 impacted job types and employment areas, but Molinar noted on Tuesday that there would be roughly 165 positions affected.
The district is also introducing an acceleration teacher position that focuses on small-group instruction and tutoring during the school day in math and reading.
“This is also going to be a posted position that our campuses are able to purchase from their own Title I (funding); however, as a district, we are reallocating our own funds to be able to have 15 assigned to our comprehensive middle schools. Fourteen are going to be assigned to elementaries based on our performance,” Molinar said.
FWISD trails other Texas districts in reading
Fort Worth ISD’s performance on state tests has consistently lagged behind other big urban districts in Texas for years. A report released last month suggests that the district’s performance declined during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to do so in the years that followed.
Researchers at Stanford University and Harvard University released the Education Recovery Scorecard, an in-depth look at student learning across the country and how it compares to pre-pandemic norms, in February. According to the report, the school district lost the equivalent of a little over a grade level in reading from 2019-2024. Like most districts, Fort Worth ISD lost ground academically during the height of the pandemic, when school closures forced students to learn remotely and many families were rocked by job losses, illnesses and deaths.
But the report suggests the district’s biggest losses came between 2022-2024 — after schools had reopened for in-person learning. During that two-year period, the district lost about seven-tenths of a grade level in reading, compared to about half a grade level between 2019 and 2022.
Fort Worth ISD lost more ground than the state as a whole and other similar districts from 2019-2024, according to the report. While Fort Worth ISD lost a little over the equivalent of a grade level in reading, districts across the state, as well a comparison group of demographically similar districts, lost a little less than a third of a year.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Molinar said she’s optimistic about where Fort Worth ISD is headed. The results the district saw within a few months after it sent central office staff to work with students are a sign that intensive tutoring, and a commitment to focus on students, can pay dividends, she said.
Molinar encouraged parents and other community members to get involved in the issue. Fort Worth ISD is holding an informational session at 6 p.m. April 7 at the district’s central office to talk with community members about volunteering as literacy coaches.
“I need you. I need you in my first-grade classrooms the rest of this year, and going into the next school year,” she said. “...As a city and as a community, if we say we’re focused on literacy, then join me.”
During public comment, Leadership ISD’s Tarrant County Regional Director Ken Kuhl urged board members to invest in student literacy and academic outcomes while creating a budget for the upcoming financial year that aligns with the district’s new strategic and literacy plans. He acknowledged hard decisions will have to be made to achieve that.
“I ask you, is that as hard a decision as sitting there and selecting which of our students in Fort Worth ISD are going to leave school unable to read? If you had to choose those kids that were not going to be able to read, is that as hard as making some tough budget choices?” Kuhl said. “Dr. Molinar is starting the process with her reduction in force resolution tonight. You need to support the hard decisions that she makes for our budget. And honestly, I’m optimistic for us.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 11:01 PM.
