Following a state-mandated conservatorship and years of squabbling board members, the Texas Education Agency decided Wednesday to overhaul South San Antonio Independent School District’s entire board of trustees.
The state also appointed Saul Hinojosa, a retired superintendent for Somerset ISD, as South San’s new superintendent.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed Hinojosa and a completely new seven-member board of managers, citing nearly two decades of elected trustee and administrative dysfunction, in which he said resulted in “diminished student academic outcomes, poor financial controls, public distrust and multiple TEA investigations.”
South San ISD’s board has been under TEA investigation four times, twice in 2021 and twice in 2023.
The decision to take over South San ISD comes after the TEA found the district was in violation of five different state education codes and demonstrated the district “failed to oversee the management of the district when it engaged in actions or inaction that could negatively impact district personnel and the students of SSAISD.”
Mentioned in the investigation’s final report was the board’s inability to keep a superintendent for a full term since 2011, repeated failures to meet quorum during board meetings and the district’s $12 million budget deficit.
According to the report, the TEA’s Special Investigations Unit will recommend to the Commissioner of Education that a sanction be issued up to and including the installation of a Board of Managers that replaces the existing board of trustees due to the current board’s demonstrated inability to ensure adherence to state law requirements relating to governance.
Abelrado “Abe” Saavedra was appointed as the district’s conservator in 2023 by the TEA. Saavedra was tasked with guiding the board and reporting back to the TEA.
Though the outgoing board of trustees seemed to be on an upward trajectory in September after Saavedra told the Report that “things had calmed down,” Saavedra had sent a letter to Morath last year urging him to install a board of managers.
In the letter, Saavedra said the solution would “facilitate a clean break from the governance failures that have persisted in South San Antonio ISD and facilitate an opportunity for the district to be governed by community members who can implement best practices and provide wise oversight and strong governance.”
According to Steve Lecholop, deputy commissioner of governance at the TEA, the state takeover of South San ISD is only the 10th district overhaul to occur since 2000.
Who’s taking over?
Picked out of 20 applicants, South San ISD’s new state-appointed superintendent previously led Somerset Independent School District for 15 years. He had also been working as a search consultant for Walsh Gallegos, a major law firm that assists school districts in Texas in vetting and selecting superintendent candidates for the board to interview.
While Hinojosa was at Somerset ISD, he turned an academically struggling district into one given an A by the state in accountability rankings.
“Our goal is to achieve the same here in South San,” Hinojosa said Wednesday after the TEA’s overhaul announcement.
Hinojosa said his first priority as superintendent will be to meet community members by attending monthly meetings at campuses throughout the district.
“Right now is day one — I’m just gathering data, talking to staff,” Hinojosa said. “Gathering some reports in order to ascertain what our major challenges are and what we need to do in order to correct that.”
The state-appointed board of managers were selected from a pool of 57 candidates, and five of them are graduates from South San ISD. The new members include Raymond Tijerina, Karla Gomez Sanchez, Darrell Balderama, Adrian Guerra, Kelly Murguia, Aurelina Prado and Jesus Rendon III.
Tijerina was selected to be the new board’s president, and is a cofounder and CEO of a San Antonio-based educational support company that helps school systems with hiring practices. The board’s vice president will be Sanchez, who works from home and has children who attend schools in the district.
How long it would take for South San ISD to get back on track is a hard question to answer, Hinojosa said. But he’s banking on his experience at Somerset, a district he entered under similar circumstances, to have a “recipe of what success looks like.”
What happens next?
Only two of the board’s managers live inside South San ISD’s boundaries, a requirement for elected school board members.
Since five of the members are alums of the district, and the other two live and work on the South Side, Lecholop said the TEA was confident that the appointees “reflect the values of the community and are members of the South Side community.”
Under Texas law, the Commissioner of Education must decide to either continue the state takeover or implement a three-year rollback to elected leadership by the two-year anniversary of the announcement date of the takeover.
Outgoing school board members can’t object to the overhaul after they waived that authority in 2023 in exchange for the agency delaying the state-takeover decision for a year.
The newly-appointed board’s progress will be measured using the Lone Star Governance Framework, which was created by the TEA for governing bodies — district boards and superintendents — whose main priority is to “improve student outcomes.”
“The board of managers has the task of putting into place systems and processes that are sustainable, that are baked into the foundation of how the district runs, so that once a return to elected leadership happens, there are best practices that the elected leaders can follow,” Lecholop said.
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