On Monday, State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat running for governor, launched “Team Texas Public Schools.”
The new nonpartisan initiative aims to empower parents, teachers, and administrators to fight for public education amid school closures and state takeovers.
Following the announcement, Hinojosa hosted a town hall in Fort Worth on Tuesday night.
She laid out her agenda, which includes halting the state’s A-F accountability ratings, wiping vendor contracts—including the state’s $1 billion private school voucher program—and ensuring districts taken over by the state are given back their local control.
“Let me be clear,” she told attendees. “Yes, our schools need improvement. But it can never, ever be the answer that we take our public schools away from parents and the community.”
She also said on day one as governor, she would fire Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, which was met with raucous applause that lasted nearly a minute.
Hinojosa has been an outspoken critic of Morath and an opponent of how the TEA operates. The agency has taken over several school districts in the last few years—including Fort Worth ISD in October 2025—and even more districts are currently at risk.
Throughout Tuesday evening, dozens of Fort Worth residents lined up to ask Hinojosa questions, including how they can push back against their district’s state takeover, how Hinojosa will reverse the private school voucher program, and how she’ll fight for Texas teachers.
Fort Worth ISD has faced cuts to several staff positions, programs, and campuses since it was taken over
It’s also been the face of anti-Muslim attacks after a newly assigned principal, Shayma Alzubi, was removed from her post following far-right conservative backlash just days after she was hired.
When asked about how she and other Democrats plan to stick up for Alzubi, Hinojosa called the move “deeply shameful” and pointed to culture wars fueled by her opponent, Republican incumbent Gov Greg Abbott, as the root of the problem.
She said her opponent “masterfully uses culture wars to distract us with one hand, while taking our money for his friends with the other hand.”
“The Bluebonnet bill didn’t have Christian nationalism in it,” she said. “When it was first introduced and we heard it in the Public Education Committee, it was just a bad bill that was very expensive, and MAGA moms turned out against it, Democratic moms turned out against it, moms who didn’t care about politics at all, teachers from everywhere turned out to say, ‘No, we do not want a scripted, canned lesson plan for our kids in our schools.’ So what did they do? They sprinkled within it Christian nationalism to make it about culture wars.”
That’s the fight, Hinojosa said, Republicans want Democrats fighting.
“They don’t actually hate Muslims, they don’t hate African Americans, they don’t hate Mexican Americans, but they want us to talk about that because they don’t want us to talk about their failing record and what’s actually impacting all of us.”
Ale Checka, a Fort Worth ISD teacher, asked Hinojosa how elected officials are currently fighting for them amid her district’s takeover.
“Is there going to be any kind of meeting or oversight of what is happening right here in Fort Worth?” Checka asked. “You all have broken us. We don’t have anybody doing oversight on us. We don’t have an elected board and there’s no pushback at all to come to our defense.”
Hinojosa was adamant that the best way she could instill change was winning the governorship in November, and urged attendees to keep showing up, speaking at board meetings, and resisting in whatever ways they can.
“The state-appointed board does not have your best interests at heart,” Hinojosa said. “They are serving the governor and the governor’s interests, so all you can do is resist. They are going to keep taking over our districts if we are not as loud and as forceful and as honest as we can be. There is no working with them. There’s just making them accountable for every single action that they take.”
