La Marque dazed by district closure
TEA appoints conservator with power over school board
Phillip Palmer was watching his son play at La Marque High School’s playoff football game Thursday night when murmurs spread through the crowd: The state was shutting the school district down.
Soon, the news was all anyone could talk about.
While Palmer, 29, knew about its recent academic challenges, he never fathomed that the district he graduated from more than a decade ago, which was such an integral part of his tight-knit community, could cease to exist.
The prospect left him “saddened and brokenhearted.”
“If the (Texas Education Agency) could see the love and passion we all have, they wouldn’t be able to close us down,” he said.
In a rare and drastic move, the TEA ordered Thursday that the 2,300-student school district in Galveston County close on July 1, citing years of unmitigated academic and financial problems.
La Marque ISD students and schools will be absorbed by one or more surrounding districts — Dickinson, Texas City, Hitchcock or Galveston ISDs, according to TEA officials, though the state agency has yet to determine specifics.
It will be up to the absorbing district to determine whether the campuses will remain open and whether staff will remain employed.
‘Areas to work on’
In a short statement released Friday, the district said “details of the commissioner’s decision are not known at this time.”
District officials and school board members did not respond to requests for further comment Friday.
Meanwhile parents, alumni and other community members reeled from the news.
“We knew there were areas to work on, but we didn’t think we’d get closed down,” Palmer said.
Palmer’s sister and wife won the title of homecoming queen their respective senior years at La Marque High School. He served as school mascot, the Cougar. He also participated in choir and band.
Word of the district’s closure didn’t make it to the football field Thursday night. Palmer’s son, Trevon, didn’t hear until he went home. The varsity left tackle’s first question: “Where am I going to graduate from?”
His son attends the district’s Renaissance Academy, a science, technology, engineering and math-focused campus.
Haven Wells, 86, taught junior high life science and earth science for 30 years. When he joined La Marque ISD in 1957, he found it to be one of the highest-paying districts in Texas for teacher salaries. Former students would tell him they were making higher grades at the University of Texas than they did at La Marque. He thinks the increased testing in schools didn’t help school performance and agrees the school had a “financial problem, which a lot of districts do.”
“Too many administrators at the top were making more than their share, to put it kindly,” he said.
He also thought there wasn’t the same level of “parental pushing” in recent years to make students focus on subject matter they may not find interesting. If the district is absorbed by nearby Texas City, Wells thinks it’ll be for the best.
“They’d have a better academic and social environment,” he said, “and would get used to a new school.”
‘Most drastic step’
The district’s closure would be the sixth such action in 15 years, according to TEA officials. The last state-initiated closure was North Forest ISD in 2013. It was absorbed by the Houston ISD.
“Basically, this is the most drastic step the commissioner can take regarding a school district,” spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said. “It is only taken when the commissioner doesn’t see any future hope for the district to be viable.”
The state cited both academic and financial reasons for La Marque’s closure. The district received an “academically unacceptable” rating from the TEA in 2011 and an “improvement required” rating in 2013 and 2014. The district also had a rating of “substandard achievement” in its financial accountability rating in 201112.
Below standards
The district and the state entered into an agreement last year directing the district to correct any financial and academic deficiencies or face closure. While the district met standards in academic accountability ratings for 2015, four campuses had “improvement required” designations, Culbertson said.
The district also failed to meet the “student achievement” accountability ratings — 55 percent of its students met STAAR standards in 2015.
Last month, La Marque Superintendent Terri Watkins announced she would resign in December, stating that district leaders were being punished for problems created by their predecessors.
The district was once again substandard in financial accountability, mainly because it spent about 18 percent of its budget on administrative costs when a district its size should be spending 11 percent or less, Culbertson said. Failing to meet that threshold prompted the state’s decision to close the district.
The state is appointing a conservator, Doris Delaney, who also oversaw the controversial closure of the 7,000-student North Forest school district two years ago. She will have power over both the district’s board of trustees and the superintendent.
Rob D’Amico, spokesman for the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said teachers and school employees who work at La Marque and who could lose their jobs when the district is annexed should not be penalized by the administration’s missteps in recent years.
D’Amico said the teachers union disagrees with schools being “punished” based on accountability ratings.
“We’re for keeping neighborhood schools and independent school districts open,” D’Amico said.
The union does not have a local La Marque ISD chapter.
Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk, a local education advocacy nonprofit, said those familiar with the district had known for a long time that La Marque was in trouble, both academically and financially.
Sanborn said the potential for improving student outcomes will be greater once the district is dissolved, though the nearby districts themselves do not have robust academic records. “You lose a little bit of local control as a parent, and you’re left in the fate of a district that may just be a little bit better,” he said.