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Fort Worth ISD's state-appointed board voted Tuesday evening to ask the Texas Education Agency for permission to continue hiring uncertified teachers in key subject areas for two more years.
If its application is approved, Fort Worth ISD would join 570 other districts across the state that have gotten permission from TEA to push the deadline back. That's a list that includes Dallas ISD, Plano ISD and Garland ISD.
Related: Nearly 800 Fort Worth ISD teachers resigned after state takeover
The board voted unanimously to apply for a two-year extension to a deadline laid out in a bill state lawmakers passed last year tightening the state's rules on hiring uncertified teachers in most subjects. House Bill 2 gives districts until the beginning of the 2027-28 school year to have no uncertified teachers teaching math, science, English or social studies.
Districts may apply for a two-year extension, giving them until the beginning of the 2029-30 school year to get all their uncredentialed teachers certified. The bill also gave districts funding to help get those teachers certified.
FWISD hires 142 uncertified teachers
The proposal board members approved Tuesday also includes a plan to phase uncertified teachers out of core subjects by the 2029 deadline. During Tuesday's meeting, district officials said they'd hired 142 uncertified teachers to work in the district during the upcoming school year. Last year, 161 uncertified teachers worked in the district, leaders said.
Denisha Presley, the district's chief talent officer, told The Dallas Morning News that district leaders can't yet give an accurate number of how many uncertified teachers will work in the district during the upcoming school year, because they haven't finished hiring for the upcoming school year. District leaders also can't say how many of last year's uncertified teachers either left the district at the end of the last school year or earned their certifications, she said.
Fort Worth ISD saw a sharp uptick in teacher resignations at the end of the most recent school year, according to data obtained by The News through a public records request. By June 28, the district's deadline for employees to resign, the district had processed 1,026 teacher resignations, up 58% over the previous year. That surge didn't start until after the district's state-appointed board and superintendent took control in late March. After March 24, 797 teachers resigned, an 84% increase over the same period the previous year.
During Tuesday's meeting, Daniel Soliz, the district's chief of schools, said the district had hired 998 certified teachers over the summer in addition to the 142 uncertified teachers. That level of hiring will allow the district to start the year with few to no teacher vacancies while working to get its uncredentialed teachers certified, he said. On Wednesday, district Chief of Staff Louis Kushner posted on social media that the district had 17 teacher vacancies left.
Uncertified teacher numbers grow across Texas
The certification requirements in House Bill 2 came in response to massive growth in the number of uncertified teachers working in classrooms across the state. Over the past six years, districts across the state have increasingly relied on uncertified teachers to help fill vacancies created by the post-pandemic educator shortage. By the 2023-24 school year, more than half of the roughly 30,000 new teachers statewide were uncertified, according to the Texas Education Agency.
Related: A challenge but 'worth it': Texas schools push to certify teachers even with extension
Researchers say that growth in the number of untrained educators teaching Texas students is worrisome because those teachers tend not to be as effective as their certified colleagues. In a paper published in 2024, researchers at Texas Tech University used STAAR scores to determine that students whose teachers were uncertified tended to gain three or four fewer months' worth of learning per year compared with those whose teachers went through a high-quality teacher training program.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab's journalism.
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