How Round Rock ISD Finally Lost Their State-Assigned Monitor

After almost two years, Round Rock ISD has lost its state monitor (Photo by John Anderson)

The Texas Education Agency has been more aggressive in recent years about exerting control over elected school district boards – especially progressive ones – by installing monitors, conservators, and the like. Round Rock ISD has been one of the school districts the TEA intervened in, with its recent monitorship lasting almost twice as long as the agency originally said it would. Over that time, public records show that TEA officials scheduled a secret meeting with far-right members of the board. Meanwhile, RRISD Board President Amber Landrum says the agency dodged her questions about how the monitorship could end. Only after the board announced it would seek legal counsel on how to remove the monitor did TEA abruptly pull out of the district – the day after the board's plan became public. That followed months of public pressure.

"We encouraged people to speak at the board meetings, speak to the monitor himself, and say, 'Why are you still here?" said Krista Laine of Access Education RRISD, a public school advocacy organization. "Basically, it was: 'We see you. We see what's happening here.'"

RRISD's experience – suffused in politics, with moving goalposts for success and vague timelines – should hold lessons for Austin ISD, as the district will soon deal with its own intervention by TEA. The agency told AISD in March that it will appoint a conservator to improve the district's provision of special education services. Though AISD's intervention should only address that goal, TEA's conservators can have broad powers – reordering a district's budget, closing schools, and changing curricula, among other things. The TEA also has the power to appoint a board of managers to a school district, replacing its elected board of trustees. Or, as in Round Rock's case, it can appoint a monitor to make recommendations and report back on a district's performance.

Round Rock's monitor, former Superintendent David Faltys, was appointed in August 2021, ostensibly to address the board's grievance procedure after a former board president refused to acknowledge a conflict of interest in 2019. By the time of Faltys' appointment, that president and most of his fellow trustees were no longer on the board. Nevertheless, TEA crafted a "corrective action plan" that gave Faltys one year to fix the perceived problem.

However, RRISD had bigger problems at that point than its grievance procedure. COVID-19 was spiking and right-wing community members were furiously protesting the mask mandate ordered by the district's recently hired superintendent, Hafedh Azaiez. When Azaiez was publicly accused of abuse by a woman with whom he'd had an affair, TEA officials intervened in the controversy, according to public school advocate Jack Chiles.

Emails and texts that Chiles received through an open records request show that in September 2021, TEA Deputy Commis­sion­er Jeff Cottrill set up a meeting with board members Danielle Weston and Mary Bone, far-right allies of the community that had advocated against Azaiez. TEA officials didn't meet with any other board members who might've opposed suspending the super, and in December 2021, the monitor recommended that Azaiez be placed on leave.

The board did suspend the superintendent, but the charges against Azaiez were ultimately dismissed. The board reinstated him, over the objections of Weston and Bone, in March of 2022. By then, it was election season and several candidates from Round Rock's right-wing community were campaigning to overturn the district's mask mandate, fire Azaiez, ban books, and, generally, bring Christian Nationalist values to the district. The far-right candidates were trounced in the November election and an even more progressive board was seated.

By then, Faltys was 16 months into the 12-month monitorship. And, Landrum told us, the grievance process that triggered the monitorship had been fixed. "We made sure that we did the things in our corrective action plan to meet our goals, check all the boxes," she said. "And then that's when I started saying, 'I want next steps. I want to know exactly what the next steps are. I want to know how I end this monitorship.' And that's when it became really, really difficult to get that information from TEA."

Landrum said she spent five months asking what standards TEA used in removing its monitor and was met with obfuscation and vague assurances. Finally, an agenda item addressing the issue was posted on June 16 for a board meeting to occur four days later. Landrum was unwilling to talk with us about the item, but it reads, "as requested by Trustee Landrum, the Board will consult with its attorney to discuss legal options and next steps available to the District regarding status of TEA monitor placement."

The next day, the district received word from TEA that the monitor would be withdrawn. The Chronicle will report in greater depth on the agency's monitorships in an upcoming issue.