San Antonio ISD is cranking up its Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) turnaround model at three campuses next school year, putting serious money on the table to draw veteran teachers to some of its hardest-to-staff schools. District leaders say that with extra stipends, state allotments and base salary stacked together, some teachers could cross the $100,000 mark. Poe Middle, Hot Wells Middle and Crockett Academy will be the first to test the expanded approach.
Under the plan, ACE strategic stipends will range from $16,000 to $22,000. The biggest checks are earmarked for teachers in STAAR-tested courses, with smaller premiums for non-STAAR core subjects and more modest stipends for student-support roles. Staff at participating campuses will work an extended year, adding 11 instructional days, and receive expanded professional development, daily planning time and data-driven coaching. Put all of that together with base pay and state funding mechanisms, and district officials say top teachers can clear six figures. Applications for the 2026–2027 ACE cohort are already open, as reported by KENS5.
ACE's track record in Texas
The ACE model started in Dallas ISD and is built around strategic staffing, longer instructional time and targeted pay that funnels highly effective teachers into the district’s lowest-performing schools, as outlined by The Dallas Morning News. Fort Worth’s recent ACE rollout, which set six-figure base salaries for many core teachers, gives San Antonio educators a nearby glimpse of how far districts can go when they decide to pay for results, according to dangles $100K paychecks.
How the dollars add up
A key part of the financial puzzle is the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), a state program that can send districts additional money for designated teachers. In some cases that can reach about $32,000 per designated teacher, depending on campus characteristics, according to the Region 6 Education Service Center. Districts then stack those state dollars on top of local ACE stipends and existing base pay, which is how officials land on those six-figure projections.
San Antonio ISD serves roughly 45,000 students, a scale that shapes how leaders think about where and how to deploy those resources, per the San Antonio Report. Concentrating money and staff on a handful of campuses is a strategic bet that bigger paychecks and more support can stabilize schools that have struggled with staffing churn and low performance.
What’s next for teachers and schools
District officials say they will recruit staff for ACE roles and post openings through the SAISD careers portal ahead of the 2026–27 school year. Teachers selected for ACE campuses will work the extended calendar and join focused instructional teams that receive additional planning time and coaching. Leaders describe the shift as a targeted effort to lock in experienced educators at high-need schools rather than watching them rotate out every few years.
Questions remain
Supporters argue that the pay boosts and added supports could finally give veteran teachers a reason to stick with tough assignments, instead of treating them as temporary stepping stones. Critics and some trustees, though, are asking how long the district can afford this strategy if state or federal offsets do not come through at expected levels.
Dallas’ own experience shows that ACE-style programs can be retooled as districts wrestle with budget trade-offs and scale, according to The Dallas Morning News. That history is part cautionary tale, part blueprint, as San Antonio ISD moves ahead.
For families and teachers on the selected campuses, the promise is straightforward: more consistent instruction, heavier coaching and higher pay in classrooms that have often felt left behind. Whether that formula moves test scores and attendance quickly enough to justify the investment will be the yardstick SAISD leaders point to once the pilot is under way.
