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The San Antonio Independent School District has placed 18 schools on a watchlist for targeted intervention. The schools have all received unacceptable academic ratings from the Texas Education Agency for at least two years in a row.
SAISD officials consider half of the campuses on the watchlist “high priority,” because TEA has rated them D or F for three years. The state could take over district management or close the schools if they don’t improve by 2027.
Despite the elevated attention and focus, Superintendent Jaime Aquino said SAISD is on track to turn the campuses around and avoid state sanctions.
“We have actually provided significant support for these schools,” Aquino told the district’s trustees during a board meeting Monday evening.
The superintendent also said the district’s ratings were trending in the right direction compared to 2024, when half of SAISD’s schools were rated D or F.
“We have reduced the number of campuses rated D or F by 35%,” Aquino said. “But I also want to be very clear that we must accelerate our efforts, because we still have too many campuses in that category, and our students deserve better, and we cannot settle for anything less.”
The district as a whole received a C rating from TEA in 2025.
In addition to turnaround plans and support facilitated by the state, Aquino and Deputy Superintendent Shawn Bird pointed to this year’s adoption of uniform, districtwide math and science curriculum as the key to improving academic performance and moving campuses off the watchlist.
SAISD has also adopted new reading curriculum at some campuses.
“I think we will start to see more rapid improvement now that we have a common curriculum, and we're training our teachers on common curriculum,” Bird said, noting that many SAISD students move during the school year.
“Particularly like in mathematics, they could be on a different unit when they move from one school just two or three blocks away,” Bird said. “So now we have a uniform curriculum, and we have common assessments for that.”
Aquino estimated that a third of SAISD’s students move within the same school year.
“There was not continuity of instruction,” Aquino said. “I actually describe this sometimes (as) being the Wild West. I mean, you would have gone in the past to the same school and from one classroom to another in the same grade. It was night and day.”
Aquino said the uniform curriculum also enabled SAISD to give model lessons before the start of the year and weekly math assessments that give teachers feedback on what steps to take based on the results.
“When we presented this to all the principals, they applauded,” Aquino said. “And one of the reasons that we were not able to do that before … is because we didn't have a uniform curriculum. … The fact that we have a uniform curriculum in mathematics and science allows us to be able to do the same weekly assessment.”
“It's not really for us so much as it is for the school to have data so that the teachers can act on how their students are doing on a more frequent basis,” Bird added. “Any school will have access to that. But for the watch list schools, it's a mandatory thing. There'll be a dashboard where they can see their data every Friday morning.”
SAISD also plans to do walkthroughs of schools on the watchlist in October. Instructional leaders who don’t directly oversee the schools will observe and provide feedback.
Four SAISD middle schools and five elementary schools are on the district’s high-priority watchlist, with three consecutive years of unacceptable ratings.
- Davis Middle School
- Rhodes Middle School
- Poe STEM DL Middle School
- Tafolla Middle School
- Graebner Elementary
- Herff Elementary
- Hirsch Elementary
- Ogden Elementary
- Carvajal Elementary
Three more middle schools and four K-8 academies are also on the watchlist.
Next week, SAISD trustees are slated to discuss a partnership with an organization called District Management Group to provide more targeted interventions. Last year, the organization piloted their program with four middle schools. Their new proposal includes a price reduction if Davis Middle School and Tafolla Middle School don’t improve their academic outcomes.
San Antonio ISD isn’t the only Bexar County district with campuses at risk of state sanctions if they don’t improve by 2027. Edgewood ISD and Judson ISD also have multiple schools with three years of unacceptable ratings.
Mead Elementary in Northside ISD has also been rated D or F for three years. Mead serves a lot of Northside’s refugee students and has a high percentage of English Learners.
Four Bexar County charter school campuses also had three years of unacceptable ratings. Only two of the four charter schools, Southwest Preparatory Northeast Campus and Compass Rose Dream, remain open. Bexar County Academy and The Gathering Place closed earlier this year. Texas doesn't renew the charters of charter school networks with three years of unacceptable ratings.
