Fort Worth ISD shelves school-choice lottery and advisory committee changes after parents and teachers object

Two proposed Fort Worth ISD policy changes that drew pushback from families and educators are on hold until at least December.

At their Nov. 10 meeting, the district's state-appointed board of managers pulled an update to the policy on transfers within the district and voted 7-0 to delay a rewrite of the District Advisory Committee, the Fort Worth Report reported Wednesday. Managers Jay Stegall and Luis Galindo were absent.

The lottery question

The transfer proposal would have removed board policy language requiring a lottery for students applying to the district's schools and programs of choice, leaving administrators to set the rules for assigning seats, according to the Report. The district has said it still plans to use a lottery for next school year.

Past lotteries gave priority to groups such as siblings of current students and children of district employees.

Parents told managers that priorities had already shifted as families began applying for next fall. One mother told the board her family spent a weekend drawing up backup plans in case her fifth grader did not get into the middle school his siblings attended, the Report said. Other speakers raised concerns about students who need transfers because of school closures or transportation problems.

Earlier in the meeting, Superintendent Peter Licata said he was stopping changes to school-choice transfer priorities while administrators study the data. "We need to preserve continuity for students and families while examining whether inequities exist in our current practices," Licata said, according to the Report.

Chief of staff Louis Kushner told the Report the transfer item will return in December. It was not immediately clear how the pause affects families now applying.

Advisory committee

The second proposal would have cut the advisory committee, which advises leaders on goals, performance and instruction, from 21 members to 13 and moved appointments from the board to the superintendent.

Teacher seats would have fallen from eight to five and parent seats from five to two, and designated seats for elementary, middle and high school parents, special education and choice programs would have been removed.

A teacher who spoke asked how cutting parent and teacher seats would improve engagement, the Report said.

Licata himself asked managers to withdraw the plan and rethink how members are picked, saying the committee has had trouble meeting regularly and holding onto members but that he did not want to choose its members himself. A revised version is due in December, along with the district improvement plan.

The debate comes as the district's future governance is unsettled. Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged to end state takeovers of school districts, but no date has been set for returning Fort Worth ISD to its elected trustees.

Sources

fortworthreport.org