Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said during a visit to Wichita Falls Wednesday that he has only two choices by law about what to do with Wichita Falls ISD.
He can order the closure of troubled Hirschi Middle School or appoint a board of managers for the district as a whole.
School ratings released by the Texas Education Agency in August showed that WFISD overall achieved a 68 rating or D score. Although Hirschi scored a D, the school’s student population has a record of five consecutive accountability ratings failures. That triggers legally-mandated action by Morath and his choice between closing the campus or a state takeover of the district.
Hirschi received the student population from now closed Kirby Middle School, which struggled with academic performance.
After touring three Wichita Falls campuses, Morath told the Times Record News in an exclusive interview that he will make a decision in a “few months” after the accountability ratings that were released to the public are finalized.
He and three other people from the TEA toured Hirschi, Barwise Middle School and Booker T. Washington Elementary school.
Morath said he was in Wichita Falls to “get a picture of what instructional quality looks like on the ground.”
Regarding Hirschi, Morath said, “What I saw today was a lot of very hardworking people that have clearly made very significant improvements. The question is, why did the district let it get this far in the first place? In a school system where there’s an individual campus that is failing for five years in a row, that is not just a minor accident, that is academic neglect. I need to have some kind of evidence that that will never be allowed in Wichita Falls again.”
Wichita Falls’ new high schools had low ratings for their first accountability grades for 2024-25 — an F for Legacy High School and a D for Memorial High School.
WFISD Superintendent Dr. Donny Lee said the grades were low in part because neither school has a track record of past performance to compare to.
Morath said that the first year a high school is open, it doesn’t have graduation-rate data. But the grades for the two schools were a fair appraisal of whether the students are either reaching grade-level knowledge in reading and math or whether they are growing toward grade level.
At Booker T. Washington, Morath and his team visited classrooms to observe instruction, talked with children, teachers and administrators and provided assessments. They were accompanied by representatives of state legislators and the Region 9 Education Center, and Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce CEO Ron Kitchens.
The commissioner said he saw good practices and practices that need some work during his campus visits.
“I saw highs. I saw lows today. I think the question I always ask myself is how well is the district as a whole supporting those teachers so they can be as successful as possible with our kids,” he said.
Morath said the TEA looks at both a particular school and how well the district as a whole is supporting improvements in the structural quality.
“We have to make sure we’re providing a loving, disciplined environment for our kids, but we also are teaching them reading, writing and arithmetic, and we’re doing it well,” he said.
“I got to see a lot of very hardworking people who clearly love kids doing yeoman’s work to try to mold these young minds,” Morath said of his visit to the campuses. “The question, I think, remains, ‘How can we ensure that we are meeting our moral obligation to all kids?'”
He called Wichita Falls schoolchildren “amazing.”
“You walk in the halls, you see in the classrooms kids are attentive, disciplined,” he said. “They’re eager to learn.”
After the tours, Lee said WFISD educators were just happy for Morath to observe what happens in the classrooms every day.
“We’re an open book and wanted him to engage with our teachers, our principals in order to help him make an informed decision,” Lee said.
(This story was updated to add new photos, a photo gallery and a video.)
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Texas education commissioner tours WFISD schools ahead of state takeover decision
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / Wichita Falls Times Record News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
