Zach Leonard, a parent to three Fort Worth Independent School District students, wants his children to be able to walk to a high-quality public school in their own neighborhood.
“That’s kind of an old school value, but I believe it to be an extremely important facet of our society,” he told Courier Texas.
But that value is under threat after the Texas Education Agency took control of Fort Worth ISD last October.
Under state law, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath was required to take action after one of Fort Worth’s campuses—Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade Center—received a failing accountability rating for five consecutive school years. In March, Morath replaced the previous superintendent, Karen Molinar, who served as Fort Worth ISD’s interim superintendent since October 2024 and worked for the district for over 30 years, with Peter Licata.
Morath also appointed nine new members of its appointed board of education, replacing the locally elected school board.
The new leadership has already drastically changed campuses across Fort Worth ISD.
“ We want to restore local elected control, and I say elect—that’s important—because the control we have is local technically, but they’re not elected,” Leonard said. “These nine people are business leaders primarily—lawyers, architects, and folks like that—business leaders in the community. And now they are doing the role of the trustees.”
Leonard founded the group FORT, or Families Organized and Responding to Takeover in 2025. The coalition of parents, educators, and concerned community members is working to improve student outcomes, build community, and restore local control amid the state takeover.
Leonard said teaching has become “rigid” under the takeover, and curriculum is scripted and derived from artificial intelligence. He also said there aren’t a lot of real books left on campuses.
“The rollout of new curriculum was really poor. They didn’t leverage curriculum writers, in fact, they let many of them go, and now use AI to create scripts for curriculum, and they had many mistakes. That disengaged a lot of teachers.”
The district has also faced cuts to several programs, departments, and staff positions, including directors of emergent bilingual programs, dual language coordinators, special education analysts, speech therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and psychologists.
Licata claims the district is starting fresh and will rehire for all the positions, but Leonard said it won’t be that easy.
“They got rid of all the part-time speech language pathologists,” he said. “Speech therapists and other special education teachers in things like dyslexia intervention are already stretched thin, they’re going from campus to campus. There’s rarely someone dedicated to a campus, and might have a sick day or they may have maternity leave, and so who fills in now that the part time employees are all gone?”
“They couldn’t even fill all the roles they had last year,” he added. “They’re not going to be able to quickly fill all these vacancies they’ve created.
Licata and the board also voted to close the International Newcomer Academy in April, despite public outcry and pushback.
The campus is dedicated to middle school refugee students and asylum seekers learning English as a second language.
Leonard said this fast-tracked reduction of force goes back to schools being severely underfunded.
“Each school district, not just Fort Worth ISD, has large deficits due to underfunding, that’s the biggest issue,” he said. “We have underfunded public schools, and Fort Worth ISD wasn’t immune to underfunding, because the basic student allotment has barely been raised and hasn’t caught up with inflation, and that has caused over a $20 million deficit.”
“So the superintendent says they have to make these cuts because of the deficit, but the deficit is there because of low student enrollment that’s been driven by the expansion of charter schools, private schools, vouchers,” Leonard added. “Public schools in general are underfunded, and have been given a bad name.”
Leonard said the takeover, which is slated to last a minimum of two years but could last longer, has been anxiety-inducing and has caused a lot of confusion. Houston ISD’s state takeover, which began in 2023, has been extended to 2027.
How are parents fighting back?
FORT has a plan to fight back, Leonard said, by “building a large tent,” showing up to board meetings, and ensuring Licata and his staff hear their concerns.
“ We changed our FORT acronym from Families Organized Resisting Takeover to Families Organized Responding to Takeover, and that was intentional,” Leonard said. “We’ll eventually move to Families Organized Rising Together, and Families Organized Rebuilding Together.”
FORT is organizing letter-writing campaigns, hosting summer workshops, coaching parents on speaking at board meetings, educating community members on local politics, partnering with Parent Teacher Associations, and fostering community around their shared goal.
They’re also working toward improving literacy rates across grade levels by organizing volunteers for resources like dyslexia intervention at community centers.
Interested parents and families can learn more here.
“If we continue to degrade public schools, then democracy will be the inevitable victim, because we will see a less educated electorate,” he said. “We will see people who care less about their neighborhood schools and community, and there’s more clustering and people gathering up their own personal things and saying, ‘I’m just going to take care of mine and screw the rest,’ and so this is a bigger picture about a collective good.”
