IDEA chief resigns after 20 years
IDEA Public Schools CEO Tom Torkelson resigned from his position leading Texas’ largest charter school network Friday evening, ending a two-decade run with the organization he co-founded and helped build into one of the nation’s most prominent charter operators.
In a message sent to staff members around midnight, IDEA board chair Al Lopez said Torkelson stepped down “to embark on the next chapter of his career.” Board members selected JoAnn Gama, the charter’s president, superintendent and other co-founder, to replace Torkelson as CEO.
“We are excited that JoAnn is chief executive at this important moment, and we are grateful for everything Tom contributed to build IDEA into the remarkable organization it is,” Lopez wrote.
In an interview Saturday, Torkelson said he and IDEA’s board members reached a mutual decision about his departure after multiple conversations. Torkelson said he expects to support Gama with the transition amid the statewide shutdown of schools caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“I think there was 100 percent unanimity that this was the right call for the organization at this time,” Torkelson said.
Torkelson’s resignation caps a remarkable run for the charter pioneer, whose ambition, charisma and results-driven approach helped propel IDEA’s massive expansion over the past 20 years. In
recent months, however, Torkelson’s push to lease a charter jet and the disclosure of questionable financial practices under his watch prompted scrutiny of the charter.
IDEA students, the vast majority of whom are Hispanic and come from low-income families, routinely score well-above average on state standardized tests and enroll in college at high rates compared to their peers. Skeptics argue IDEA’s success is inflated by high academic standards that deter families from enrolling students with more intensive academic and behavioral needs.
Torkelson and Gama started IDEA in the late 1990s while working as teachers in the Rio Grande Valley, opening a single school together in the border city of Donna. After meager growth in its first decade, IDEA rapidly expanded in the 2010s in the Valley, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth.
The network operates 91 schools in Texas enrolling 49,500 students, along with five campuses in Louisiana. IDEA is scheduled to open its first four Houston-area schools this year on two sites in northern Harris County.
Torkelson served as a key figure in IDEA’s expansion, pushing to enroll 100,000 students across the country by 2022. Earlier this year, Torkelson told the Houston Chronicle that he wanted IDEA to become “the largest high-performing school system in the United States of America.”
Torkelson also played a significant role in fundraising for IDEA, which has received tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic groups to aid its expansion.
“It’s a bit of an unfinished masterpiece,” Torkelson said Saturday. “What we’ve created is beautiful and remarkable, but there’s so much more to do.”
However, some of Torkelson’s financial and operational moves led to criticism over the past several months.
Torkelson’s desire to lease a charter jet as a method of reducing travel hassles between the network’s hubs drew sharp backlash in December 2019.
One month later, more scrutiny followed the disclosure that IDEA spent about $400,000 annually on luxury boxes and tickets for events at San Antonio’s AT&T Center. IDEA officials said more than 1,000 employees received tickets each season as a reward for performance, with the “lion’s share” allotted to campus-level staff and students.
During Torkelson’s tenure, several relatives of IDEA executives and board members also engaged in business dealings with the charter, including a company coowned by Chief Operating Officer Irma Muñoz’s husband that billed more than $600,000 for uniforms, other clothing and gear.
In a letter to IDEA’s 7,000-plus employees in January, Torkelson defended each expenditure as above-board but agreed with criticism that some of his recent decisions were “really dumb and unhelpful.”
IDEA nixed the charter jet lease, vowed to end its ticket purchases and banned financial transactions with high-level leaders and their relatives. Charter officials said private donations covered the tickets and would have been used on the jet lease.
Torkelson said Saturday that he believes IDEA leaders have “made a lot of progress and improvements in some of the areas we’ve been criticized for.”
“To me, that’s what makes this a nice transition point,” Torkelson said. “In some ways, it really is a fresh start for the organization.”
Gama, who graduated from Houston ISD in 1993, also has received numerous accolades for her leadership in building IDEA’s academic reputation and statewide footprint. In his letter to staff, Lopez wrote that Gama has performed or supervised “just about every job in the organization over the last 20 years.”
“JoAnn is an inspiring, eminently capable and proven leader who can seamlessly assume a new role,” Lopez wrote.
Torkelson said he reached a severance agreement with IDEA board members, though neither he nor IDEA officials immediately provided details of the agreement Saturday. He earned $555,069 in compensation in 2017-18, according to IDEA’s most recently available tax records, and routinely ranked as the state’s highest-paid public K-12 school employee.
Torkelson said he does not have another job immediately lined up. He also does not plan to take another executive position with IDEA or its wholly owned subsidary, IPS Enterprises, which was created to assist the network’s expansion outside of Texas.
“What we’ve created is beautiful and remarkable, but there’s so much more to do.” Tom Torkelson,
IDEA Public Schools CEO