Texas Eighth Court of Appeals (El Paso)
Appellate Ruling Invalidates One Part
Of TEA’s ISD Campus “Partnerships” Rule
Ruling: One part of the education commissioner’s rule implementing 2017’s SB1882 is invalidated — while two other parts of the rule are affirmed. [Education Commissioner] Mike Morath and TEA v. Texas American Federation of Teachers and Texas State Teachers Association, No. 08-20-00152-CV. Issued June 14.
Background
The TEA and education commissioner appealed after a judge in Austin agreed with TSTA and Texas AFT that three parts of the commissioner’s SB1882 implementation rule violates state law. The appeal, via a routine judicial procedure, was reassigned from the Austin appeals court jurisdiction to the Eighth Court in El Paso.
- Note: SB1882 allows an ISD to contract with a nonprofit entity, with the commissioner’s approval, to run a campus with a long-term history of poor accountability ratings in lieu of the commissioner closing the campus or replacing the ISD’s school board with an appointed board of managers.
A three-judge Eighth Court panel unanimously — based on the language of SB1882 and other legal considerations:
- Invalidated the rule’s language stating that the commissioner’s decision to approve or disapprove an ISD partnership agreement is final and not appealable. To the contrary, applicable state law allows the commissioner’s ISD campus partnership decisions to be appealable — first administratively to the commissioner and then, potentially, to the courts, the justices ruled.
- Affirmed a rule provision that specifies that it is only when the partnering entity is a Texas-approved open-enrollment charter school that the staff of the campus to be managed by the entity must be consulted about the partnering agreement before it is executed — and that their employment rights and protections under their current contract would not be affected.
The justices noted that ISDs could, but are not obligated to, provide these protections to the staff of a campus to be managed by a nonprofit that is not a Texas approved open-enrollment charter.
The decision references a
2019 ruling by a San Antonio appeals court that concluded that because San Antonio ISD hired an out-of-state charter network — that was not a Texas-approved open-enrollment charter school — to run a struggling SAISD campus, the staff of the campus was not required to be afforded the rights and protections contained in SB1882. - Affirmed the rule’s “local policy” provision that requires the campus, to the greatest extent allowed by applicable law, to be free of all laws and school district rules and policies, except for the rules and policies made applicable to the campus as written into the executed partnership agreement.