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Trustees for the San Antonio Independent School District approved a three-year contract with a controversial charter network Monday night.
Third Future Schools is known for its ties to the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD, who implemented sweeping changes to the largest school district in Texas after he took the helm.
The contract approved by SAISD trustees Monday gives Third Future control over three of the district’s schools: Tafolla Middle School and Ogden Elementary on the West Side and Hirsch Elementary on the East Side.
Trustees also voted to close Rhodes Middle School and reassign those students to Tafolla, effectively turning responsibility for the students at four schools over to the charter network with a contractual agreement to bring the schools up to an academically acceptable rating by next year.
The agreement with Third Future is what’s known as an SB 1882 Partnership. The Texas Education Agency gives districts who enter SB 1882 Partnerships a two-year reprieve on state interventions for poor academic ratings.
More than 50 people signed up to speak against closing Rhodes and contracting with Third Future Monday.
Hirsch Elementary School teacher Erin McWhorter told the board the district didn’t give them the support they needed in enough time for them to make a difference.
“You aren't just announcing a charter takeover. You are publicly admitting that you have given up not only on the students, but the teachers as well,” McWhorter said. “There wasn't a day this year where we weren't reminded what was at stake. We were expected to be superhuman, never having a bad day or an off moment only for you all to pull the rug before our students even tested. Before the data even came in you guys are done.”
Many speakers expressed concern that Third Future would cut electives and athletics and inadequately support students with disabilities.
“Sports is what's keeping our kids out of these streets,” said Rhodes Middle School parent Crystal Villarreal. “Imagine y'all take sports out. How many gun violence, how many kids are going to turn to the streets?”
Villarreal said the closure of Rhodes would be the third time her children were displaced by schools closing on the West Side.
“We were a family at Rodriguez Elementary that got shut down. My kids attend Carvajal Elementary; that school is getting shut down at the end of the school year. So now Rhodes is an option,” Villarreal said.
TEA closed Rodriguez Elementary in 2019 after the school received an unacceptable academic rating for a fifth time.
Rodriguez was one of six SAISD schools at risk of state sanctions for poor ratings in 2018, but district officials thought it would score high enough to avoid sanctions. Instead, SAISD focused on finding an SB 1882 Partnership to protect Stewart Elementary.
The 2018 contract with New York-based charter network Democracy Prep to run Stewart Elementary was a flashpoint in former Superintendent Pedro Martinez’s tenure at SAISD, and the inspiration for a community-led push for more transparency and input.
SAISD signed the contract with Democracy Prep before the 2018 state accountability ratings were out. A few months later, Stewart received an acceptable rating, making the protection of an 1882 Partnership unnecessary.
Trustee Stephanie Torres, who represents the West Side, said Monday’s decisions take the district back to the abrupt loss of Rodriguez Elementary.
“We can't be closing two middle schools in one side. We can’t be attacking the West Side all at once. We deserve transparency like we've been doing,” Torres said. “We've been doing great with transparency; we've been doing good with mental health. And for us to go back a good while, we basically went back to where Rodriguez closed, which it was just an eviction notice right before spring break again.”
Closing Rhodes Middle School and turning Tafolla over to Third Future leaves SAISD without a district-run traditional middle school on the West Side.
If district staff want to continue working at the schools run by Third Future they will have to reapply and become employees of the charter network instead of the district.
Torres said she feared families and staff will instead choose to leave — and that she would do the same.
“I will pull my kids out. I will pull them out, and I will go to a different district, if possible,” Torres said. “Any staff that's going with this partnership ain't coming back. Ain't going to sign up with it.”
Torres and Jacob Ramos were the only trustees to vote against closing Rhodes Middle School and contracting with Third Future.
Former San Antonio mayor and longtime trustee Ed Garza, however, said closing Rhodes and working with Third Future was about survival.
“It only takes one school of our 80 plus that we have to put the entire school district all over, the employees, all of the students, in a situation that we see today in Houston, and starting in Fort Worth,” Garza said, referring to school districts TEA took over after individual campuses failed state accountability ratings.
“My job … as a trustee is to make sure we do everything we can not to get to that point and make the decisions that I think will give us the best opportunity, not only for student success, but to keep our school district as independent as you can call it,” Garza said. “We answer to the state's designated agency, Texas Education Agency, whether we like it or not. We get our funding from the state primarily. And so, we are not, in the true sense, independent. We answer to a creator that sometimes feels like they don't want us around.”
According to district administrators, TEA has the option to replace the elected school board and appoint new district leadership after a single campus fails the state accountability rating for four consecutive years. State law requires TEA to intervene after five years unless a district finds an outside organization to run the school as an SB 1882 partner.
Deputy Superintendent Shawn Bird told trustees Third Future is the only charter network designated by the state as a “turnaround partner” for SB 1882.
“We have several schools that we call our priority schools, and we have been working with them, supporting them all year to try to get them out so that we would not be where we are today,” Bird said. “However, we have a few schools that it does not look like they're going to get an academically acceptable rating.”
SAISD placed 18 schools on a watchlist last fall for improvement. All 18 schools have been rated D or F for at least two years, putting them at risk of state sanctions if test scores don’t improve.
Carvajal Elementary, which trustees voted to close earlier this semester, Ogden Elementary, Hirsch Elementary, Rhodes Middle School, and Tafolla Middle School have all received Ds or Fs since at least 2023. Lawsuits challenging changes to the way the state rates schools prevented ratings for 2023 and 2024 from being released until this year.
SAISD Superintendent Jaime Aquino and Third Future CEO Zach Craddock told trustees Monday that Third Future would maintain the same level of services for students with disabilities as SAISD.
Craddock also said students at Third Future schools would have one 60-minute elective a day and the option to participate in athletics after school.
“We have provided all the athletics that students have wanted, provided we had enough people to field a team. We have done that at all of our middle schools, starting in 2021 at Ector College Prep,” Craddock said.
However, Craddock said he used electives as a planning period for all teachers in the same grade level, which prevents students from multiple grade levels from participating in the same elective. And he made it clear that his number one priority was improving test scores.
“They are not in (Improvement Required) because of football, mariachi, choir. They're in for reading, writing and math,” Craddock said. “I will not sacrifice those instructional minutes for anything and ever, because … what I am promising you is to get them out of F status in year one into a C.”
Edgewood trustees are slated to vote on their own SB 1882 partnership with Third Future Tuesday night. If approved, the charter network will run Edgewood’s Brentwood Middle School, which has also been rated academically unacceptable for three years.
