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Houston ISD moved a major step closer to temporarily losing local control over its school board Thursday, as state academic accountability ratings showed that one of the district's long-struggling campuses received its seventh consecutive failing grade, triggering a Texas law requiring harsh sanctions.

Barring a successful HISD appeal of Wheatley High School's rating in the next several weeks, state law mandates that Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath now must close the historic Fifth Ward campus or replace the district's much-maligned school board with a state-appointed governance team.

Morath and the agency's leaders have strongly suggested they would appoint a new school board if forced to act. An appointed board likely would take control of the district in early 2020.

Morath did not discuss HISD or take any questions from the news media during an appearance Thursday in Aldine ISD in northeast Harris County.

The state law demands action against any district with a campus receiving five consecutive failing grades as of 2018, regardless of the district's size. Wheatley avoided triggering sanctions last year because it received an accountability waiver due to Hurricane Harvey, but the campus narrowly fell short of meeting standards this year.

If state officials appoint a new school board, the incoming governance team will inherit a district on relatively strong academic footing. HISD received a "B" grade for districtwide performance, on par with many of the state's largest urban districts. Its overall score of 88 marked a 4-point improvement over last year.

Twenty-one HISD schools received an "F" grade, equal to 7.5 percent of all district campuses. An identical number of HISD schools did not meet state academic standards last year, though most received a Harvey waiver.

Notably, several HISD high schools met standard after struggling in recent years. Kashmere High School received a "C" grade, the first time it has met standard in 11 years. Madison, Sterling and Washington high schools also earned "C" grades, while North Forest and Yates high schools narrowly missed a "C" rating and scored "D"s.

A few hundred educators, elected officials and HISD families celebrated Kashmere's long-awaited emergence from "improvement required" status during a rally at the northeast side school. The spectators often cheered as district leaders recounted the efforts needed to raise achievement there.

"It's been a long time coming, but a change has come to HISD. And a change has come to Kashmere High School," HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan told the crowd, backed by red-white-and-blue balloons and a sign declaring "#KashmereOut2019."

Several HISD heaped praise on Kashmere's staff, including first-year Principal Reginald Bush, for producing the largest increase in accountability scores among the district's 280 campuses.

"There should be no child that we throw away, no school that we throw away, no school that we close, no board that we get rid of," said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston. "We should come together in unity."

The joyous Kashmere event came as Wheatley's failing grade is expected to set in motion a long-anticipated process of removing local control over the state's largest school district, an unprecedented move that has drawn praise and criticism from the Houston community.

Some state and local leaders have argued HISD's school board allowed Wheatley and a few other campuses to deteriorate over multiple years, requiring intervention from the Texas Education Agency. Opponents of the move have said local voters should bear responsibility for shifting the district's course through elections.

TEA officials have never replaced the school board in a district remotely as large as HISD, which enrolled about 209,000 students last year. To date, El Paso ISD, with an enrollment of about 60,000 students, is the most populous district to receive a state-appointed board.

In addition, state officials have never ousted a school board under the law requiring intervention after five consecutive failing grades. Legislators enacted the law in 2015 as a method of forcing districts to address chronically low-performing campuses. A key architect of the statute, state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., D-Houston, graduated from Wheatley.

State Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Humble, said Thursday that HISD officials did not take advantage of funding opportunities and legislative maneuvers that could have staved off intervention.

Huberty cited HISD's decision the past two years to not surrender control of long-struggling campuses to outside entities, an arrangement that could have temporarily prevented sanctions and brought an additional $1,800 per student to those campuses. Several HISD board members argued the move would have represented a privatization of public schools.

"We've given them every opportunity to be successful, and they continue to choose not to," Huberty said.

To meet the standard in 2019, Wheatley had to receive an overall accountability score of 60 or higher, while also scoring 60 or higher on three out of the four domains used to calculate the final rating.

Wheatley would have received an overall grade of 63, but it only hit the 60-point threshold on one out of the four domains. As a result, Wheatley's overall grade automatically lowered to 59 under state accountability rules.

TEA officials added the requirement that schools exceed 60 points on three of four domains – raw achievement, student progress, performance to similar schools, closing achievement gaps – as they created rules for the state's new academic accountability system in 2018.

"It's a system designed to create multiple paths by which you can demonstrate excellence, but at the same time, you still have to have safeguards to ensure we're being honest with ourselves as to how we're supporting students, and being honest with parents," Morath said this week.

Lathan on Thursday compared Wheatley's predicament to a baseball player successfully crossing home plate but an umpire calling the runner out. She said Wheatley's staff will continue to receive support under the guidance of Principal Joseph Williams, who she called "the right principal at the right time to restore Wheatley High School."

Lathan said the district likely will not appeal Wheatley's rating.

"At this point, we don't see that we have any extenuating circumstances where we would need to appeal," Lathan said. "However, we will still go back and look at it."