In Texas, a school system that fails to meet its students’ needs for five consecutive years faces daunting alternatives. Writ broadly, district leaders can close underperforming schools, hand them over to a nonprofit third party or cede control to a state-appointed board to implement a turnaround.
Even as the hard-fought takeover of the Houston Independent School District three years ago continues to generate heated headlines, at least one state-led restructuring is unfolding with little drama.
When Texas education officials took over the South San Antonio Independent School District in February 2025, the new leaders they installed inherited a fearsome to-do list. The small, urban school system — one of 14-plus districts in the city — had scored four consecutive D’s on state report cards, with none of its 13 schools rating higher than a C.
Some two dozen teachers lacked college degrees, let alone credentials to teach basic subjects such as math and reading. Another 14 were “underperforming,” according to their evaluations.
Low pay? Definitely part of the problem. But so was a lack of basic infrastructure. There weren’t enough buses, and many of the 13 school buildings had not received any TLC in years.
Deficits had been running as high as $12 million a year. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s catastrophic for a 7,000-student district where more than 93% of kids come from families in poverty. Put another way: In South San, as the community is known, the property tax base is not robust.
Efforts to turn things around? Since 2000, the state has taken over the central city district 10 times. Board infighting — which sometimes boiled over in public — and allegations of financial mismanagement and nepotism have dogged the school system.
But 20 months ago, the state appointed a new board of trustees and a superintendent who let 36 teachers go, restructured more than 50 central office jobs and sent some of those administrators into classrooms, hired new teachers and implemented a merit-pay system. As the second anniversary approaches, things seem to be improving.
The 74 sat down with the temporary board’s president, South San alum and longtime education advocate Ray Tijerina, to learn what’s working.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
For you, serving as a South San Antonio ISD trustee is a homecoming of sorts. Tell us about your roots in the community.
I’m born and raised on the South Side. My dad worked at an H-E-B warehouse for 36 years. He didn’t make a lot of money. My mom stayed home. It was just me and my brother, and we both went to the district. I had a really great experience.
As a student, I was middle of the road. I was horrible at math. I was more of a dreamer and a visionary, which kind of makes sense, because it translated to my work.
When I got [to college], I just felt out of place. I didn’t know what a syllabus was. I wasn’t prepared like I should have been. I ended up leaving college and joining the Navy. As a veteran, I got my degree, and that’s how I ended up getting into education.
What do non-Texans need to know about South San Antonio?
The South Side is what makes the city go. If we decided not to show up to work, I think the city would shut down. We’re a community of entrepreneurs. We’re a tight-knit community of people that know how to do a little bit more with less.
If the Spurs are winning or the Dallas Cowboys are winning, you see all these vendors pop up on the streets of the South Side selling gear — literally overnight. It’s amazing. It’s a testament to that spirit of trying to make something good.
That’s how I feel about the kids, too. The kids are very resilient — but they shouldn’t have to be, right?
Why has South San’s takeover been different from some of the higher-profile ones?
I feel like the Texas Education Agency did a really good job with the [trustee] vetting process from the beginning. From what I understand, they had about 75 applicants. Everybody who applied had to show up on a weekend for two days of training, eight hours apiece, and you didn’t know whether you were going to be on the board or not. It weeded out a lot of people who didn’t want to put the time in.
I think they learned some things from Houston. We’re nowhere near as big, but I think they made a deliberate effort to bring in people the community knew. If you go to a board meeting and see somebody on the dais, you say, ‘I know them. I see them at H-E-B (a chain of beloved Texas grocery stores). I see them at Valero (gas stations).’
The board we replaced are still elected officials, they just can’t make any decisions. Even they have come to the table. They’ve shown a lot of support.
I think people were just tired. The timing was right.
South San went up a full letter grade on its state report card this year. What strategies fueled that?
One was obviously performance pay: attracting talent, identifying talent in our mid-level ranks like principals and coaches, and recruiting teachers who want to be part of the mission.
Another big key was aligning everybody on curriculum. Before, there wasn’t really an aligned curriculum the district was using. We adopted the controversial Bluebonnet curriculum (an elementary-grades curriculum Texas officials modified from Amplify, a high-quality, evidence-backed set of materials), but it works for us.
When [Bluebonnet] first came from the state, people said it was a Bible-infused curriculum. It’s got some text, some verbiage, some stories from the Bible, but it’s not really focused on that. For what we were trying to do, it helped us when it came to instruction. It was already built out. It was ready to go, and at the right time.
Now, everybody’s operating from the same playbook. It makes things more efficient, and the coaches and principals are able to push in more and have more alignment with the teachers they’re coaching.
What does an appointed trustee do?
We do everything an elected board would. We have the same decision-making power.
And it’s not lost on us — and this is where I appreciate my colleagues so much — that we’re in a unique position. None of us is having to work for an election, so we’re able to focus on what needs to be focused on, which is student outcomes.
How is it working out?
One of the biggest things when we came in was: How are we going to bring in the best talent and make sure we can keep the best talent? Superintendent Saul Hinojosa cut a lot of administrative staff and put all that money back in classrooms, back into teachers.
Of course, Dr. Hinojosa increasing salaries helped a lot. Our starting teacher salary is [at least] $60,000 and goes up from there, depending on experience. Compared with the rest of the city, I’d say we’re on the higher end.
We [try to] put two master teachers at every campus. They go into classrooms and they run coaching clusters with the grade-level teams. They’re playing a pretty pivotal role. It’s starting to garner results.
The Teacher Incentive Allotment is a really good program. Districts are able to identify talent, coach and develop them, and get them on a path to maybe being a principal one day. It’s a good way for teachers to make more money and grow as leaders.
Our chief of human resources has done a really good job identifying and recruiting talent. People are looking at the district through a different lens now. It seems like an exciting place to work, and she’s using that as leverage to attract more talent.
How are you paying for all of this?
It gets harder and harder every year with declining enrollment. It’s no secret there are buildings that don’t have a lot of kids in them. You see schools getting shut down in districts across the state and the city.
We have to make sure we’re realistic with expectations when it comes to enrollment and identify trends when we’re creating budgets. It’s the same problem everybody across the country has. You’ve got to get creative.
In Texas, we have the ESA [education savings account] program coming in. You’re starting to see smaller school models, like microschools. Maybe there are things we can learn about how to get smaller, how to get more condensed.
You have a history of leadership in the charter school sector. Were you expecting a backlash because of that?
At first, to be quite honest, yes. I almost didn’t apply, because my work grew up in the charter school space and I didn’t want to bring any unwanted backlash on the district because of my affiliation with charter schools. But it turned out not to be a big deal. There was one story — Texas Public Radio wrote it — that talked about my charter affiliation, but it kind of went under the radar. We haven’t received any kind of backlash.
What do you bring from the charter sector to this work?
Insight into how charter schools operate, and how deliberate they are when it comes to goals. Sometimes people look at charters and think they’re really hard to run. But when I talk to the rest of the board about customer service — say, why IDEA Public Schools is so good at it — I tell them to look at how they track data. They track how fast the people at the front respond to a parent. They track the work they do around family engagement.
There’s still a lot of ISD-versus-charter stuff. I try to be a voice that says, look, we’re actually very similar, and we’re struggling with some of the same problems. There are things each side does that could help the other. I want to be a bridge. I know I’m not going to solve anything big, but if I can help, I want to.
South San has been under state conservatorship before. Are there lessons from those past experiences to help make this change durable?
The first year was a lot of building out what this is. We got rid of all the board policies and created new ones. We got rid of all our board constraints and superintendent constraints. We took everything down to the studs and built everything back up. Now, it’s, ‘Okay, we’ve done this, let’s re-engage the community.’
Honestly, if all of us leave and it ends up more backward than before, I personally feel like it would be a failure. We need to make sure we’re setting the table for whoever comes next.
A number of the displaced board members ran unopposed in the last election, which can signal a lack of interest in what can be a thankless job. When your trusteeship ends and power is returned to an elected board — a change that could be years away — what’s your stump speech about why people should consider running?
It’s going to be really important for us as a board, and for the district, to go out and get people thinking about running for a school board seat in South San. What does that look like? What’s a board member’s responsibility?
My thing is educating families on why it’s so important and how it ties to the community itself. What I try to do when we go to football games or events is talk to people and educate them: This is what it’s all about. This is what we actually do. We need to get people excited about it.
That’s what’s top of mind for us right now.
A number of districts are up for state takeover this year. What advice do you have for their trustees?
Have an open mind. One thing I really admire about Dr. Hinojosa and the rest of the board is that everybody goes into every conversation with an open mind. Nothing is off the table. Everybody is free to share ideas.
And take the time to get to know the other board members and trust them. You’re going to have to make tough decisions together, and the only people you have in that room are the ones on your left and right.