As the Austin school district prepares to hand over operations of three middle schools to external partners to avoid a potential state takeover, one campus offers a glimpse into what one partnership already accomplished and what happens after they end.
Mendez Middle School, which has been operated by charter partners since 2018 after years of failing state accountability ratings, is returning fully to Austin ISD control this summer after earning a B rating from the state. The transition comes as district leaders debate whether charter partnerships are necessary to keep Burnet, Dobie and Webb middle schools from triggering a state intervention of the district after facing a similar, years-long struggle with school ratings.
Now, not only will the district put to a test once more whether charter partnerships can stabilize struggling campuses, but also whether Austin ISD can sustain those gains once the district regains operational control – and what lessons were learned through Mendez’s experience.
What Mendez shows about life under and after a charter
The school board is expected to vote later this month on whether to enter into charter partnerships for Burnet, Dobie and Webb middle schools. Each campus is at risk of receiving a fifth failing accountability rating this year, which would trigger the state education commission to close the schools or appoint a board of managers to oversee the district, diminishing local control.
Under the 2017 state law that allows for partnerships with external providers as a way to improve failing schools, the selected operator takes over academics, operations, staffing and campus leadership, and has two years to raise the school to a passing rating under the state accountability system, which heavily focuses on standardized testing scores.
Mendez followed such a path seven years ago. After failing to meet state accountability standards since the 2014-15 school year, the campus in 2018 entered its first charter partnership, taking advantage of the 2017 provision. However, its partnership with T-STEM, which the school board voted to terminate in December 2021, failed to get the school to a passing score. Third Future Schools was then brought in to take over management in 2022 and secured a passing rating in the 2024-2025 school year. With that benchmark reached, district leaders recently announced they will end the partnership and the campus will return to district oversight in August.
Now, district leaders have the goal to preserve the school’s progress made under the charter school operator. In a letter to parents, district leaders said they will work with families, staff and community members to shape the future of the school and have begun gathering input through surveys and planned meetings.
An Austin ISD spokeswoman confirmed the school would offer a dual language program, but the broader academic vision is still being developed with community input.
Third Future Schools referred all questions to Austin ISD.
For parents like Marianla Peredo, whose daughter is a seventh grader at Mendez, the return to district control brings both relief and uncertainty.
“If the district is going to take on the school, they need to worry about their education and supervision and communicate well with the parents,” Peredo said in Spanish. “If they change the teachers, there could be a conflict, or the kids could welcome the change. As parents, we can say one thing or another, but what matters is how the kids will respond to the change.”
Peredo said she didn’t realize the school was operated by a charter school when her daughter first enrolled, but credits current teachers and administrators with stabilizing the campus. Her concern is whether staffing, discipline, or communication changes could disrupt what she sees is a system that is finally working.
When her daughter first enrolled, other moms warned Peredo about the school’s low ratings and discipline problems that plagued the school before Third Future took over.
What’s at stake for the next three schools
Toni Templeton, senior research scientist at the University of Houston, said other than the district regaining oversight of campus operations, there is little incentive for a district to take a school back from charter management, but partnership contracts are often set to end when goals have been met.
Partnerships pause accountability consequences for two years while the charter operator works to improve academic performance, with additional state funding during that period which ends when the schools return to district control.
During a partnership, the organization contracted to operate the school can bring in changes in curriculum, instructional strategies, programs, staffing and budgetary decisions, or simply be limited to instructional delivery, depending on the contract and whether the partner was brought in to add innovation to the district or to turn around a school.
Templeton said changes to a school under a partnership are different and localized, as opposed to those under a state takeover of the district, in which the state education commissioner can appoint district leadership and impose sweeping education, staffing and procedural changes districtwide.
In Houston, where the state took control in 2023, the changes led to the departure of thousands of students and rising teacher turnover. There, Mike Miles, the state appointed superintendent who founded Third Future Schools, implemented the New Education System model, which Templeton calls a new instructional approach that affects how teachers teach, are hired and evaluated and how students move about the day, among other elements.
“The changes that everyday people saw were quite substantial,” Templeton said.
At Mendez, reaction to Third Future’s changes has been mixed, with some parents saying their students benefited from the charter’s stricter discipline and educational support, while others said the partnership strained community ties. Published materials by Third Future describe aspects of their model that it says differ from traditional public school education. Those include an employment structure that links compensation and working conditions to achievement outcomes, an instructional design that emphasizes differentiated learning and regular demonstrations of what students have learned, and a culture that operates on a consistent schedule without closures for inclement weather and other interruptions.
Enrollment numbers from the Texas Education Agency show Mendez’s student population declined from 842 during the 2014-15 school year, when the school first began to fail accountability standards, to 199 by the end of the 2024-25 school year. That data show the biggest loss came in the school year that saw Third Future Schools take over, but fewer than 25 students have left since the charter took the helm.
While the charter operator ultimately lifted the campus out of failure, some school board members have questioned the success in light of a depleted student population. Some community members also shared criticism.
Robert Kibbie, a former Mendez parent and longtime volunteer at the school, said the charter partnership fractured community participation.
According to Kibbie, low resources and lack of support from school district leaders, as well as rapid turnover of school leadership were among the primary factors that impacted the school’s path to success before partnering with external operators. Both things, he said, led to less motivation and stalled camaraderie between the kids and the staff. Now, he feels cautiously optimistic about the school’s future and hopes the district has learned from the past.
“I think they are going to start paying attention,” said Kibbie. “We also, as a community, are going to hold their feet to the fire. We are going to make sure we support the school because we saw how close we came to losing it, and we did lose it for a while.”
Across the city, the three middle schools now face the same accountability pressure Mendez once did. Superintendent Matias Segura said in an interview prior to the announcement that he recognized Third Future Schools’ success in raising the school’s rating, but partner operators inevitably bring their own systems and priorities.
District leaders have yet to announce which external partners they are considering for future partnerships.
For now, Mendez has avoided a permanent loss of local control. As district leaders weigh charter partnerships for Burnet, Dobie and Webb, families and educators are watching closely, aware the path Mendez takes next may soon be theirs as well.
