Fort Worth ISD’s mid-year grade: incomplete. What’s next to fix academic crisis? | Opinion

The last thing anyone wants to think about right now is another round of elections.

But local campaigns will be gearing up in weeks, and voters in the Fort Worth school district will have their best chance in years to weigh in on the district’s direction. Five of the nine school board seats are on the ballot. The district is at a crucial junction, with an opening for superintendent and the desire for a significant intervention building among civic, business and philanthropic leaders.

All of Tarrant County should have a sense of urgency about our largest district and its record of failing children. Some would no doubt welcome bold action from the board, through setting audacious goals or making a visionary superintendent hire.

Despite that need for urgency, the best thing the board can do right now regarding a new superintendent is wait. Having helped get the district to this low point, the trustees should let voters weigh in before making that decision. What the board can - and should - do is support the triage steps taken by interim Superintendent Karen Molinar that could pay dividends in the short term.

It’s been a rough few months for the Fort Worth ISD. Test scores yet again showed crisis-level results in key subjects such as reading, and civic and business leaders, with Mayor Mattie Parker at the tip of the spear, said enough is enough. The mayor’s call to action brought into the open problems long seen but never given enough focus.

The district parted ways with the superintendent it had hired just two years ago. Angélica Ramsey’s tenure was marked by fights over administrative cuts, school closures and the very plan needed to get FWISD out of the academic muck. Perhaps Ramsey was a bad fit or misstepped. But she’s gone and the board remains, and trustees must follow the first rule of getting out of a hole: Quit digging.

The board is still working to define goals for the district and a strategic plan to achieve them, President Roxanne Martinez said recently when she and Molinar interviewed with the Editorial Board. The board has not yet taken a major step toward searching for a new chief.

In the meantime, Molinar has refocused the district’s data department to identify areas most in need of help. She has dispatched administrators to ensure more staffers are working directly with students most in need of intervention on reading, math and other key areas.

We were disappointed to hear that the board is moving relatively slowly on goal-setting. It might be spring before trustees show their cards, and as we warned when the district was considering Ramsey’s fate, the district risks losing another academic year in the lives of real children.

But if that’s where we are, better now that voters hear from board candidates about how they envision the district’s future. As Martinez noted, let candidates put their ideas forth and voters hold them accountable. That’s why rushing a superintendent hire — the biggest single step the board can take — would be pointless.

Molinar’s initial steps seem promising, and she pledged to use interim test results to determine what’s been effective. Then, broader steps can be built into the district’s next budget to target tiers of campuses for improvement.

There’s a natural tension between goals that are aggressive and those that might seem modest but are more attainable. It might seem backward to set goals and then hire a superintendent to fulfill them, but this district first needs a board that’s aligned to the right priorities.

Let’s not hire another leader, wait for that person to digest the district’s woes, realign resources and finally get moving. Let’s get a dynamic leader who’s ready to jump on what a focused board demands.

Perhaps Molinar is that person. She wants the job and has spent her entire career in FWISD. That could give her a sharp understanding of the district’s needs or a blindness to some of its faults. The board will need to evaluate her interim work and what she says she wants to do next to determine that.

Hiring a superintendent should not make or break a school district, though. The school board, and the candidates who run for it, owe voters, taxpayers and parents a real discussion of what’s wrong in Fort Worth. Too many people want to talk about systemic issues — the effects of the pandemic, insufficient state spending, the threat of school vouchers.

These are problems all districts, especially large urban ones with disadvantaged populations, face. So, why are things worse in Fort Worth, and what do we do about it?

Molinar and Martinez, who became board president just after Parker called out the district, tried delicately to answer that question when we posed it. The board president acknowledged that the district’s community partnerships had withered and that the board had drifted from best governing practices. Molinar pointed to the need for better relations with parents, both in keeping them informed about the state of schools and in working to serve their needs.

Solutions won’t be cheap or fast. But the five races for board seats can serve as a forum for the entire city and county to debate what must come next for FWISD. Candidate filing begins Jan. 15 and ends Feb. 14 for seats in north, central, south and southwest Fort Worth and Benbrook; surely each district can muster at least two serious candidates who are devoted to their individual areas and the school system as a whole.

That’s not to say that the incumbents, should they choose to run again, should be tossed out simply for the sake of fresh blood. There will be varying agendas and ideas to sort through, including possible slates of candidates put up by certain political factions, well-meaning or not.

But voters must take this school district by the reins and demand better. Otherwise, the risk is too great that we’ll be right back here in another few years, with another failed superintendent, frustrated community leaders and parents and, worst of all, more children who cannot read or understand basic levels of math well enough to be good citizens.

And it won’t be their fault. It will be all of ours.