Fort Worth’s state-appointed board of managers has voted to close the International Newcomer Academy, the district’s only campus focused on newly arrived refugee and immigrant students in grades 6 through 9. After a packed, emotional public meeting, officials confirmed that INA students will head to neighborhood schools next fall. Families and teachers say the move risks dismantling a tight web of language support, community ties and wraparound services that many newcomer families have come to depend on.
Board vote and district rationale
In late April, the board voted unanimously to shutter the campus and approve related staffing cuts as part of a broader facilities and staffing realignment across Fort Worth ISD. Superintendent Peter Licata framed the closure as an opportunity to plug newcomer students into the electives and extracurriculars that larger campuses can offer, while folding English as a Second Language supports into day-to-day instruction. Managers cited enrollment and performance trends as key factors in their recommendation, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Parents and teachers push back
Dozens of parents and teachers filled the board room, many holding signs and prepared remarks, urging managers to keep INA open. They warned that sending students into mainstream campuses could leave the most vulnerable behind. One parent, speaking to reporters, summed up the mood with a gut-punch of a line: “Our babies are flying away.”
Teachers, some in matching shirts, told leaders they feared losing a specialized environment built for students who are learning English while adjusting to a new country. They pressed the board to spell out a much clearer roadmap for where students and staff will land and how services will follow them, as reported by The Dallas Morning News.
Enrollment and costs behind the decision
INA’s enrollment has swung sharply in recent years. State records cited in local reporting put the school’s current enrollment at about 232 students, down from higher totals in previous years. That slide, coupled with the higher per-student costs that come with running a small, specialized campus, figured heavily into district calculations.
Texas Education Agency data, reported by local outlets, show Fort Worth ISD spending roughly $20,131 per INA student. District leaders have pointed to those numbers, along with accountability trends, as part of their argument for folding newcomer services into other campuses. According to KERA, the district explicitly cited those figures in its planning documents.
District plan: Student Support Redesign
Under the district’s Student Support Redesign, INA students will be assigned to their neighborhood schools, where officials say they will receive ESL and multilingual supports embedded directly into core classes. The plan calls for strategies like visual supports, sentence frames and structured peer discussion to help students keep pace with grade-level content while they build English proficiency.
Fort Worth ISD says it will identify which campuses will receive newcomers and add targeted staffing and coaching where needed to ease the transition for students and teachers. More details on the redesign are available from Fort Worth ISD.
State oversight and why this happened
The decision comes in the shadow of a state takeover. After persistent accountability problems, the Texas Education Agency stepped in and appointed a board of managers to run Fort Worth ISD, along with a conservator. In the letter announcing the intervention, the TEA commissioner said the move was needed to strengthen instruction and governance while the district works to improve student outcomes.
That state authority gives the board of managers wide latitude to set major changes in motion, including campus closures. The timing of the INA decision is closely tied to that oversight structure, according to a community letter from the Texas Education Agency.
Other districts’ approaches
Across Texas, districts have taken different paths on how to serve newly arrived students. Some maintain standalone newcomer campuses, while others embed newcomer programs inside larger schools.
In 2022, Dallas ISD launched a newcomer program within Thomas Jefferson High School and reported enrolling a relatively small cohort of newcomer students last school year. Fort Worth leaders have pointed to that model while debating whether integration or a separate campus makes more sense. District announcements and local coverage highlight that there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and the tradeoffs are real for families either way. For more background, see Dallas ISD.
What’s next
Fort Worth ISD has begun posting board workshops and materials and says families will be notified of their child’s new campus before the fall semester begins. The district also plans additional information sessions to explain what supports will be available for newcomer students at receiving schools.
In the meantime, teachers and staff are waiting to see which positions survive the reshuffle and where specialized services will be placed. Union leaders have said they will push for a clearer transition plan and more transparency around staffing. For meeting schedules and documents, see the board workshop agenda from Fort Worth ISD, and read additional coverage of teacher reaction in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
