Fort Worth ISD needs a new superintendent. But who will apply?

When the Fort Worth Independent School District began its last search for a new superintendent, it was one of about 10 North Texas districts looking for new leaders.

Two years later, the district finds itself back in the same position. Fort Worth ISD’s board is in the beginning stages of a search for a new superintendent to replace Angélica Ramsey , who resigned from the post last month.

As it did two years ago, Fort Worth ISD faces competition for candidates both from other North Texas districts and from other big urban school systems across the country. But this time, the search for a new leader comes amid high levels of discontent on the part of city leaders with the district’s academic progress.

Will that level of instability make good candidates think twice about applying for Fort Worth ISD’s top job?

Not necessarily, said school leadership search consultant David Faltys.

“Good superintendents are kind of like good college football coaches — they’re pretty confident about stepping into situations,” said Faltys, who retired as superintendent of the Carroll Independent School District in 2021.

Ramsey’s departure starts search process in FWISD

Fort Worth ISD’s board approved a resignation agreement with Ramsey on Sept. 25, a month after Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker spoke at a board meeting, calling the district’s academic outcomes unacceptable. Although she stopped short of calling for Ramsey to be replaced, Parker said the district had lacked leadership for years, and added that poor academic performance hampers students’ opportunities after graduation.

Ramsey’s resignation took effect at the beginning of the month, leaving the district without a superintendent for a little over a week. On Tuesday, the board appointed Deputy Superintendent Karen Molinar to serve as interim superintendent while it searches for a permanent chief. Molinar previously served as interim superintendent two years ago , during the search that brought Ramsey to the district.

So far, the school board hasn’t hired a search firm to handle the process or offered any specifics about what they’re looking for in a superintendent or how they’ll go about finding that person. Board members have said the search process must include public input, but they haven’t outlined how they’ll ask parents and community members to offer their feedback.

Fort Worth ISD is just one of a handful of North Texas districts that are looking for new leaders. Granbury ISD is searching for a new superintendent after its former leader, Jeremy Glenn, was named superintendent in Carroll ISD last August. In Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD, longtime Superintendent Jim Chadwell announced he plans to retire at the end of January.

In Grand Prairie ISD, Superintendent Jorge Arredondo’s future with the district is unclear after the board placed him on administrative leave in early September, just two months after he came to the district. Board members alleged earlier this month that Arredondo had violated a policy on “discrimination, harassment and retaliation involving District employees.” A deputy superintendent is serving as interim superintendent until the board makes a decision.

Nor is Fort Worth ISD the only big urban district in the country that’s looking for a new superintendent. Within the past six months, school chiefs in Milwaukee, St. Louis and Montgomery, Alabama, have either resigned or been fired. And last month, the superintendent of the Little Rock School District offered his resignation, only to have it rejected by the district’s board. The board instead voted to keep the superintendent on board for the rest of the school year, then re-evaluate his contract.

Job market is tight, but qualified school leaders are out there

Faltys, the search consultant and former Carroll ISD superintendent, said the job market for superintendents has been tighter over the past few years. Open positions that would once have garnered 50-60 applications now might attract 30-35, he said.

On top of that tight job market, Faltys, who now works as a director of leadership acquisition for the Iowa-based search firm Ray and Associates, said superintendent searches for big districts like Fort Worth have always been inherently self-limiting. Most school leaders across the country who are looking for superintendent jobs will look at the job listing and quickly come to the conclusion that they aren’t qualified, he said, so they don’t bother applying.

But that means that the candidates who do apply for those positions usually have some experience as a school leader, either as a superintendent in another district or in another top-level administrator position, Faltys said. Those candidates are usually confident in their abilities to put a strategic plan into place, get a school board to work together and put together an administrative team to run the district, he said. That’s why he doesn’t think the community dissatisfaction Fort Worth ISD has seen over the past few months will cause too many qualified candidates to pass on the job.

“It creates new challenges, but when has a district like Fort Worth or Dallas not been challenging?” he said.

That isn’t to say that conflict within a district would never cause a potential hire to think twice. Faltys said he knows of one instance in another state where a promising candidate withdrew his name from consideration after a job interview because he sensed that divisions on the board went beyond disagreements over policy.

“They just didn’t like each other,” Faltys said. “And he said, ‘I won’t move my family there.’ And he was a great candidate.”

Texas sees uptick in new superintendent hires

The Texas Education Agency doesn’t track superintendent vacancies or resignations statewide, making it difficult to tell exactly how often district leaders leave their positions or where they go once they move on.

But Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said he’s noticed a sharp uptick in the number of administrators stepping into the superintendent role. The association offers an academy for first-time superintendents, and this year’s class has been the largest in recent memory, he said.

Brown attributes the uptick in school leader turnover to a host of pressures on Texas schools that come from outside the districts themselves — chiefly, a lack of state revenue. Lawmakers haven’t raised the amount of money districts get from the state per student since 2019. That leaves districts struggling to make ends meet, which creates job stress for superintendents, he said.

There are other factors that add pressure to district leaders’ jobs, Brown said. Political divisions at the national level trickle down to local issues, and sometimes those conflicts make their way into school board meetings. Also, students’ needs have also grown over the past four or five years, he said, with dysfunction at home and conflicts originating on social media spilling over into the classroom.

“The needs are there, which is a big reason why we need great leaders in our schools right now,” he said.

School boards need a plan for hiring leaders

James Guerra, CEO of the Austin-based search firm JG Consulting , said school boards searching for a new superintendent need to begin by talking to stakeholders both inside and outside the district. The board needs to understand what teachers and support staff need from their district’s next leader, he said. Likewise, they need to understand what the broader community expects from the district . Parker’s appearance before the board and the subsequent conversations it spurred are a good example of what form that feedback might take, he said.

Once they’ve had those conversations, the board can use that feedback to put together a leadership profile highlighting the kinds of characteristics they’re looking for in a new superintendent. Then, they can work with a search firm to find candidates who fit those criteria.

Before they do anything else, though, Guerra said the district’s school board needs to start by putting together a thoughtful plan for how they’ll proceed. So far, that’s a plan that has yet to take shape.